9&mm

mmm

!MmMi

few

■ : 1 ■’’ ':' ■

WMmmWU

;/.>L; -^r v * s sc r t- • nv

mmmm^

-MMM

tiilllS

'-' • • ••

»•• v.Jka -J%:* . ■■ '

l: <mm tyro -309^?

* * *■• •-. V * 'U * r l t- ■ ’• ' • V • V,«J>Z;

<v|-TOj<;'j‘,'Iv'f',i>*'nW*'T}? *?**’*• '*?? ' *c

•jKfstfiVfOSf:

•••'■■ . - ;: «.

r

(A ^T" '

fl*>C»S2-5

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2015

https://archive.org/details/b21902227_0002

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

VOL. H.

LONDON : PRINTED BY

8POTTISWOODE AND 00., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

LL Bo

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

A SERIES OF DETACHER

ESSAYS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS.

BY

JOHN TYNDALL, F.R.S.

SIXTH EDITION.

VOL. II.

LONDON :

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

1879.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

OF

THE SECOND VOLUME.

»o«

CHAPTER

I. REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW

II. MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES

III. ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY

IV. VITALITY . , . . . .

V. MATTER AND FORCE .

VI. SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM . . . .

VII. AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS . . . .

VIII. SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION

IX. THE BELFAST ADDRESS . . . . .

X. APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS

XI. THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND THE BELFAST
ADDRESS . . . . . .

XII. FERMENTATION, AND ITS BEARINGS ON SURGERY

AND MEDICINE . . . . .

XIII. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION .

XIV. SCIENCE AND MAN .

XV. PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION .

XVI. THE ELECTRIC LIGHT

PAGE

1

8

40

46

53

75

91

101

137

204

226

253

292

337

375

421

• ^

In the bright sky they perceived an illuminator ; in the all-
encircling firmament an embracer ; in the roar of thunder and in
the violence of the storm they felt the presence of a shouter and of
furious strikers ; and out of the rain they created an Indra, or giver
of rain. — Max Muller.

I.

REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW.

1861.

MID the apparent confusion and caprice of natural

phenomena, which roused erfiotions hostile to
calm investigation, it must for ages have seemed hope-
less to seek for law or orderly relation ; and before the
thought of law dawned upon the unfolding human
mind these otherwise inexplicable effects were referred
to personal agency. In the fall of a cataract the
savage saw the leap of a spirit, and the echoed thunder-
peal was to him the hammer-clang of an exasperated
god. Propitiation of these terrible powers was the
consequence, and sacrifice was offered to the demons of
earth and air.

But observation tends to chasten the emotions and
to check those structural efforts of the intellect which
have emotion for their base. One by one natural
phenomena came to be associated with their proximate
causes; the idea of direct personal volition mixing
itself with the economy of nature retreating more and
more. Many of us fear this change. Our religious
feelings are dear to us, and we look with suspicion
and dislike on any philosophy, the apparent tendency

VOL. II. b

2

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of which is to dry them up. Probably every change
from ancient savagery to our present enlightenment
lias excited, in a greater or less degree, fears of this
kind. But the fact is, that we have not yet deter-
mined whether its present form is necessary to the life
and warmth of religious feeling. We may err in linking
the imperishable with the transitory, and confound the
living plant with the decaying pole to which it clings. My
object, however, at present is not to argue, hut to mark
a tendency. We have ceased to propitiate the powers of
nature— ceased even to pray for things in manifest contra-
diction to natural laws. In Protestant countries, at least,
I think it is conceded that the age of miracles is past.

At an auberge near the foot of the Rhone glacier,
I met, in the summer of 1858, an athletic young priest,
who, after a solid breakfast, including a bottle of wine,
informed me that he had come up to £ bless the moun-
tains.’ This was the annual custom of the place. Year
by year the Highest was entreated, by official inter-
cessors, to make such meteorological arrangements
as should ensure food and shelter for the flocks and
herds of the Valaisians. A diversion of the Rhone, or
a deepening of the river’s bed, would, at the time I
now mention, have been of incalculable benefit to the
inhabitants of the valley. But the priest would have
shrunk from the idea of asking the Omnipotent to
open a new channel for the river, or to cause a portion
of it to flow over the Grimsel pass, and down the valley
of Oberhasli to Brientz. This he would have deemed a
miracle, and he did not come to ask the Creator to
perform miracles, but to do something which he mani-
festly thought lay cpiite within the bounds of the
natural and non-miraculous. A Protestant gentleman
who was present at the time smiled at this recital. He
had no faith in the priest’s blessing ; still, he deemed

REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 3

his prayer different in kind from a request to open a
new river-cut, or to cause the water to flow up-hill.

In a similar manner the same Protestant gentleman
would doubtless smile at the honest Tyrolese priest, who,
when he feared the bursting of a glacier dam, offered the
sacrifice of the Mass upon the ice as a means of averting
the calamity. That poor man did not expect to con-
vert the ice into adamant, or to strengthen its texture,
so as to enable it to withstand the pressure of the
water ; nor did he expect that his sacrifice would cause
the stream to roll back upon its source and relieve him,
by a miracle, of its presence. But beyond the bound-
aries of his knowledge lay a region where rain was gene-
rated, he knew not how. He was not so presumptuous
as to expect a miracle, but he firmly believed that in
yonder cloud-land matters could be so arranged, with-
out trespass on the miraculous, that the stream which
threatened him and his people should be caused to shrink
within its proper bounds.

Both these priests fashioned that which they did
not understand to their respective wants and wishes.
In their case imagination came into play, uncontrolled
by a knowledge of law. A similar state of mind was
long prevalent among mechanicians. Many of these,
among whom were to be reckoned men of consummate
skill, were occupied a century ago with the question
of perpetual motion. They aimed at constructing a
machine which should execute work without the ex-
penditure of power ; and some of them went mad in
the pursuit of this object. The faith in such a con-
summation, involving, as it did, immense personal pro-
fit to the inventor, was extremely exciting, and every
attempt to destroy this faith was met by bitter resent-
ment on the part of those who held it. Gradually, how-
ever, as men became more and more acquainted with the

4

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

true functions of machinery, the dream dissolved. The
hope of getting work out of mere mechanical combina-
tions disappeared : but still there remained for the
speculator a cloud-land denser than that which filled
the imagination of the Tyrolese priest, and out of
which he still hoped to evolve perpetual motion. There
was the mystic store of chemic force, which nobody
understood ; there were heat and light, electricity and
magnetism, all competent to produce mechanical
motion.1 Here, then, was the mine in which our gem
must be sought. A modified and more refined form
of the ancient faith revived ; and, for aught I know,
a remnant of sanguine designers may at the present
moment be engaged on the problem which like-minded
men in former ages left unsolved.

And why should a perpetual motion, even under
modern conditions, be impossible ? The answer to this
question is the statement of that great generalisation
of modern science, which is known under the name of
the Conservation of Energy. This principle asserts
that no power can make its appearance in nature with-
out an equivalent expenditure of some other power ;
that natural agents are so related to each other as to
be mutually convertible, but that no new agency is
created. Light runs into heat ; heat into electricity ;
electricity into magnetism ; magnetism into mechanical
force ; and mechanical force again into light and heat.
The Proteus changes, but he is ever the same; and
his changes in nature, supposing no miracle to super-
vene, are the expression, not of spontaneity, but oi
physical necessity. A perpetual motion, then, is
deemed impossible, because it demands the creation of
energy, whereas the principle of Conservation is — no
creation, but infinite conversion.

* See Helmholtz : ‘ Wechselwirkung der Naturkrafte.'

REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 5

It is an old remark that the law which moulds a
tear also rounds a planet. In the application of law in
nature the terms great and small are unknown. Thus
the principle referred to teaches us that the Italian
wind, gliding over the crest of the Matterhorn, is as
firmly ruled as the earth in its orbital revolution round
the sun ; and that the fall of its vapour into clouds is
exactly as much a matter of necessity as the return of
the seasons. The dispersion, therefore, of the slightest
mist by the special volition of the Eternal, would be as
much a miracle as the rolling of the Rhone over the
Grimsel precipices, down the valley of Hasli to Meyrin-
gen and Brientz.

It seems to me quite beyond the present power of
science to demonstrate that the Tyrolese priest, or his
colleague of the Rhone valley, asked for an 6 impossi-
bility ’ in praying for good weather ; but Science can
demonstrate the incompleteness of the knowledge of
nature which limited their prayers to this narrow
ground ; and she may lessen the number of instances
in which we ‘ ask amiss,’ by showing that we some-
times pray for the performance of a miracle when we
do not intend it. She does assert, for example, that
without a disturbance of natural law, quite as serious
as the stoppage of an eclipse, or the rolling of the
river Niagara up the Falls, no act of humiliation,
individual or national, could call one shower from
heaven, or deflect towards us a single beam of the
sun.

Those, therefore, who believe that the miraculous is
still active in nature, may, with perfect consistency,
join in our periodic prayers for fair weather and for
rain : while those who hold that the age of miracles is
past, will, if they be consistent, refuse to join in these
petitions. And these latter, if they wish to fall back upon

f>

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

sucli a justification, may fairly urge that the latest
conclusions of science are in perfect accordance with
the doctrine of the Master himself, which manifestly
was that the distribution of natural phenomena is not
affected by moral or religious causes. ‘ He maketh
His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth
rain on the just and on the unjust.’ Granting ‘ the power
of Free Will in man,’ so strongly claimed by Professor
Mansel in his admirable defence of the belief in miracles,
and assuming the efficacy of free prayer to produce
changes in external nature, it necessarily follows that
natural laws are more or less at the mercy of man’s
volition, and no conclusion founded on the assumed
permanence of those laws would be worthy of confidence.

It is a wholesome sign for England that she numbers
among her clergy men wise enough to understand all
this, and courageous enough to act up to their know-
ledge. Such men do service to public character, by
encouraging a manly and intelligent conflict with the
real causes of disease and scarcity, instead of a delusive
reliance on supernatural aid. But they have also a
value beyond this local and temporary one. They pre-
pare the public mind for changes, which though in-
evitable, could hardly, without such preparation, be
wrought without violence. Iron is strong ; still, water
in crystallising will shiver an iron envelope, and the
more unyielding the metal is, the worse for its safety.
There are in the world men who would encompass
philosophic speculation by a rigid envelope, hoping
thereby to restrain it, but in reality giving it explosive
force. In England, thanks to men of the stamp to
which I have alluded, scope is gradually given to
thought for changes of aggregation, and the envelope
slowly alters its form, in accordance with the necessities
of the time.

REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 7

The proximate origin of the foregoing slight article, and prob-
ably the remoter origin of the next following one, was this. Some
years ago, a day of prayer and humiliation, on account of a bad
harvest, was appointed by the proper religious authorities ; but
certain clergymen of the Church of England, doubting the wisdom
of the demonstration, declined to join in the services of the day.
For this act of nonconformity they were severely censured by some
of their brethren. Rightly or wrongly, my sympathies were on the
side of these men ; and, to lend them a helping hand in their struggle
against odds, I inserted the foregoing chapter in a little book entitled
‘ Mountaineering in 1861.’ Some time subsequently I received from a
gentleman of great weight and distinction in the scientific world,
and, I believe, of perfect orthodoxy in the religious one, a note
directing my attention to an exceedingly thoughtful article on
Prayer and Cholera in the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette.’ My eminent corre-
spondent deemed the article a fair answer to the remarks made by
me in 1861. I, also, was struck by the temper and ability of the
article, but I could not deem its arguments satisfactory, and in a
short note to the editor of the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette ’ I ventured to
state so much. This letter elicited some very able replies, and a
second leading article was also devoted to the subject. In answer
to all, I risked the publication of a second letter, and soon after-
wards, by an extremely courteous note from the editor, the discussion
was closed.

Though thus stopped locally, the discussion flowed in other
directions. Sermons were preached, essays were published, articles
were written, while a copious correspondence occupied the pages
of some of the religious newspapers. It gave me sincere pleasure
to notice that the discussion, save in a few cases where natural
coarseness had the upper hand, was conducted with a minimum of
vituperation. The severity shown was hardly more than sufficient
to demonstrate earnestness, while gentlemanly feeling was too pre-
dominant to permit that earnestness to contract itself to bigotry or
to clothe itself in abuse. It was probably the memory of this dis-
cussion which caused another excellent friend of mine to recommend
to my perusal the exceedingly able work which in the next article
I have endeavoured to review.

8

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Mr. Mozley’s book belongs to that class of writing of which
Butler may be taken as the type. It is strong, genuine argument
about difficult matters, fairly tracing what is difficult, fairly trying
to grapple, not with what appears the gist and strong point of a
question, but with what really at bottom is the knot of it. It is a
book the reasoning of which may not satisfy everyone. . . . But we
think it is a book for people who wish to see a great subject handled
on a scale which befits it, and with a perception of its real elements.
It is a book which will have attractions for those who like to see a
powerful mind applying itself, without shrinking or holding back,
without trick or reserve or show of any kind, as a wrestler closes
body to body with his antagonist, to the strength of an adverse and
powerful argument. — Times, Tuesday, June 5, 1866.

We should add, that the faults of the work are wholly on the
surface and in the arrangement ; that the matter is as solid and as
logical as that of any book within recent memory, and that it abounds
in striking passages, of which we have scarcely been able even to
give a sample. No future arguer against miracles can afford to pass
it over. — Saturday Review, September 15, 1866.

II.

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES A

1867.

IT is my privilege to enjoy the friendship of a select
number of religious men, with whom I converse
frankly upon theological subjects, expressing without
disguise the notions and opinions I entertain regarding
their tenets, and hearing in return these notions and
opinions subjected to criticism. I have thus far found
them liberal and loving men, patient in hearing,
tolerant in reply, who know how to reconcile the duties

Fortnightly Review, New Series, vol. i. p. 645.

i

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

9

of courtesy with the earnestness of debate. From one
of these, nearly a year ago, I received a note, recom-
mending strongly to my attention the volume of
‘ Bampton Lectures’ for 1865, in which the question of
miracles is treated by Mr. Mozley. Previous to re-
ceiving this note, I had in part made the acquaintance
of the work through an able and elaborate review of it
in the ‘ Times.’ The combined effect of the letter and
the review was to make the book the companion of my
summer tour in the Alps. There, during the wet and
snowy days which were only too prevalent in 1866, and
during the days of rest interpolated between days of
toil, I made myself more thoroughly conversant with
Mr. Mozley’s volume. I found it clear and strong — an
intellectual tonic, as bracing and pleasant to my mind
as the keen air of the mountains was to my body.
From time to time I jotted down thoughts regarding
it, intending afterwards to work them up into a cohe-
rent whole. Other duties, however, interfered with the
complete carrying out of this intention, and what I
wrote last summer I now publish, not hoping to be
able, within any reasonable time, to render my defence
of scientific method more complete.

Mr. Mozley refers at the outset of his task to the
movement against miracles which of late years has
taken place, and which determined his choice of a
subject. He acquits modern science of having had any
great share in the production of this movement. The
objection against miracles, he says, does not arise from
any minute knowledge of the laws of nature, but simply
because they are opposed to that plain and obvious
order of nature which everybody sees. The present
movement is, he thinks, to be ascribed to the greater
earnestness and penetration of the present age. For-
merly miracles were accepted without question, because

10

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

without reflection ; but the exercise of the 4 historic
imagination ’ is a characteristic of our own time. Men
are now accustomed to place before themselves vivid
images of historic facts ; and when a miracle rises to
view, they halt before the astounding occurrence, and,
realising it with the same clearness as if it were now
passing before their eyes, they ask themselves, 4 Can
this have taken place ? ’ In some instances the effort
to answer this question has led to a disbelief in miracles,
in others to a strengthening of belief. The aim of
Mr. Mozley’s lectures is to show that the strengthening
of belief is the logical result which ought to follow from
the examination of the facts.

Attempts have been made by religious men to bring
the Scripture miracles within the scope of the order of
nature, but all such attempts are rejected by Mr.
Mozley as utterly futile and wide of the mark.
Regarding miracles as a necessary accompaniment of a
revelation, their evidential value in his eyes depends
entirely upon their deviation from the order of nature.
Thus deviating, they suggest and illustrate a power
higher than nature, a 4 personal will ; ’ and they com-
mend the person in whom this power is vested as a
messenger from on high. Without these credentials
such a messenger would have no right to demand belief,
even were his assertions regarding his Divine mission
backed by a holy life. Nor is it by miracles alone that
the order of nature is, or may be, disturbed. The
material universe is also the arena of 4 special provi-
dences.’ Under these two heads Mr. Mozley distributes
the total preternatural. One form of the preternatural
may shade into the other, as one colour passes into
another in the rainbow ; but, while the line which
divides the specially providential from the miraculous
cannot be sharply drawn, their distinction broadly ex-

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

11

pressed is this: that, while a special providence can
only excite surmise more or less probable, it is 4 the
nature of a miracle to give proof, as distinguished from
mere surmise, of Divine design.’

Mr. Mozley adduces various illustrations of what he
regards to be special providences, as distinguished from
miracles. 4 The death of Arius,’ he says, 4 was not mira-
culous, because the coincidence of the death of a here-
siarch taking place when it was peculiarly advantageous
to the orthodox faith .... was not such as to compel
the inference of extraordinary Divine agency ; but it
was a special providence, because it carried a reason-
able appearance of it. The miracle of the Thundering
Legion was a special providence, but not a miracle, for
the same reason, because the coincidence of an instanta-
neous fall of rain, in answer to prayer, carried some
appearance, but not proof, of preternatural agency.’
The eminent lecturer’s remarks on this head brought to
my recollection certain narratives published in Method-
ist magazines, which I used to read with avidity when
a boy. The general title of these exciting stories, if I
remember right, was 4 The Providence of God asserted,’
and in them the most extraordinary escapes from peril
were recounted and ascribed to prayer, while equally
wonderful instances of calamity were adduced as illus-
trations of Divine retribution. In such magazines, or
elsewhere, I found recorded the case of the celebrated
Samuel Hick, which, as it illustrates a whole class of
special providences approaching in conclusiveness to
miracles, is worthy of mention here. It is related of
this holy man that, on one occasion, flour was lacking
to make the sacramental bread. Grain was present,
and a windmill was present, but there was no wind to
grind the corn. With faith undoubting, Samuel Hick
prayed to the Lord of the winds: the sails turned.

12

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the corn was ground, after which the wind ceased.
According to the canon of the Hampton Lecturer, this,
though carrying a strong appearance of an immediate
exertion of Divine energy, lacks by a hair’s-breadth the
quality of a miracle. For the wind might have arisen,
and might have ceased, in the ordinary course of
nature. Hence the occurrence did not ‘ compel the
inference of extraordinary Divine agency.’ In like
manner Mr. Mozley considers that 4 the appearance of
the cross to Constantine was a miracle, or a special pro-
vidence, according to what account of it we adopt. As
only a meteoric appearance in the shape of a cross it
gave some token of preternatural agency, but not full
evidence.’

In the Catholic canton of Switzerland where I now
write, and still more among the pious Tyrolese, the
mountains are dotted with shrines, containing offerings
of all kinds, in acknowledgment of special mercies —
legs, feet, arms, and hands — of gold, silver, brass, and
wood, according as worldly possessions enabled the
grateful heart to express its indebtedness. Most of
these offerings are made to the Virgin Mary. They
are recognitions of 4 special providences,’ wrought
through the instrumentality of the Mother of God.
Mr. Mozley’s belief, that of the Methodist chronicler,
and that of the Tyrolese peasant, are substantially the
same. Each of them assumes that nature, instead of
flowing ever onward in the uninterrupted rhythm of
cause and effect, is mediately ruled by the free human
will. As regards direct action upon natural phenomena,
man’s wish and will, as expressed in prayer, are con-
fessedly powerless ; but prayer is the trigger which
liberates the Divine power, and to this extent, if the
will be free, man, of course, commands nature.

Did the existence of this belief depend solely upon

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 13

tlie material benefits derived from it, it could not, in
my opinion, last a decade. As a purely objective fact,
we should soon see that the distribution of natural
phenomena is unaffected by the merits or the demerits
of men ; that the law of gravitation crushes the simple
worshippers of Ottery St. Mary, while singing their
hymns, just as surely as if they were engaged in a mid-
night brawl. The hold of this belief upon tbe human
mind is not due to outward verification, but to the
inner warmth, force, and elevation with which it is com-
monly associated. It is plain, however, that these
feelings may exist under the most various forms. They
are not limited to Church of England Protestantism —
they are not even limited to Christianity. Though
less refined, they are certainly not less strong in the heart
of the Methodist and the Tyrolese peasant than in the
heart of Mr. Mozley. Indeed, those feelings belong to
the primal powers of man’s nature. A £ sceptic ’ may
have them. They find vent in the battle-cry of the
Moslem. They take hue and form in the hunting-
grounds of the Red Indian ; and raise all of them, as
they raise the Christian, upon a wave of victory, above
the terrors of the grave.

The character, then, of a miracle, as distinguished
from a special providence, is that the former furnishes
'proof , while in the case of the latter we have only sur-
mise. Dissolve the element of doubt, and the alleged
fact passes from the one class of the preternatural into
the other. In other words, if a special providence
could be proved to be a special providence, it would
cease to be a special providence and become a miracle.
There is not the least cloudiness about Mr. Mozley’s
meaning here. A special providence is a doubtful
miracle. Why, then, not call it so ? The term em
ployed by Mr. Mozley conveys no negative suggestion,

14

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

whereas the negation of certainty is the peculiar charac-
teristic of the thing intended to be expressed. There
is an apparent unwillingness on the part of the
lecturer to call a special providence what his own
definition makes it to be. Instead of speaking of it as
a doubtful miracle, he calls it 4 an invisible miracle.’
He speaks of the point of contact of supernatural
power with the chain of causation being so high up as
to be wholly, or in part, out of sight, whereas the
essence of a special providence is the uncertainty ‘
whether there is any contact at all, either high or low.
By the use of an incorrect term, however, a grave dan-
ger is avoided. For the idea of doubt, if kept systema-
tically before the mind, would soon be fatal to the
special providence, considered as a means of edifica-
tion. The term employed, on the contrary, invites and
encourages the trust which is necessary to supplement
the evidence.

This inner trust, though at first rejected by Mr.
Mozley in favour of external proof, is subsequently called
upon to do momentous fluty in regard to miracles.
Whenever the evidence of the miraculous seems incom-
mensurate with the fact which it has to establish, or
rather when the fact is so amazing that hardly any
evidence is sufficient to establish it, Mr. Mozley in-
vokes 4 the affections.’ They must urge the reason to
accept the conclusion, from which unaided it recoils.
The affections and emotions are eminently the court of
appeal in matters of real religion, which is an affair of
the heart ; but they are not, I submit, the court in
which to weigh allegations regarding the credibility of
physical facts. These must be judged by the dry light
of the intellect alone, appeals to the affections being
reserved for cases where moral elevation, and not his-
toric conviction, is the aim. It is, moreover, because

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 15

the result, in the case under consideration, is deemed
desirable that the affections are called upon to back it.
If undesirable, they would, with equal right, be called
upon to act the other way. Even to the disciplined
scientific mind this would be a dangerous doctrine. A
favourite theory — the desire to establish or avoid a
certain result — can so warp the mind as to destroy its
powers of estimating facts. I have known men to work
for years under a fascination of this kind, unable to
extricate themselves from its fatal influence. They had
certain data, but not, as it happened, enough. By a
process exactly analogous to that invoked by Mr.
Mozley, they supplemented the data, and went wrong.
From that hour their intellects were so blinded to the
perception of adverse phenomena that they never reached
truth. If, then, to the disciplined scientific mind, this
incongruous mixture of proof and trust be fraught with
danger, what must it be to the indiscriminate audience
which Mr. Mozley addresses ? In calling upon this
agency he acts the part of Frankenstein. It is a mon-
ster thus evoked that we see stalking abroad, in the
degrading spiritualistic phenomena of the present day.
Again, I say, where the aim is to elevate the mind, to
quicken the moral sense, to kindle the fire of religion
in the soul, let the affections by all means be invoked ;
but they must not be permitted to colour our reports,
or to influence our acceptance of reports of occurrences
in external nature. Testimony as to natural facts is
worthless when wrapped in this atmosphere of the
affections ; the most earnest subjective truth being
thus rendered perfectly compatible with the most
astounding objective error.

There are questions in judging of which the affec-
tions or sympathies are often our best guides, the
estimation of moral goodness being one of these. But

16

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

at this precise point, where they are really of use, Mr.
Mozley excludes the affections and demands a miracle
as a ceitificate of character. He will not accept any
other evidence of the perfect goodness of Christ. ‘ No
outward life and conduct,’ he says, ‘ however irreproach-
able, could prove Plis perfect sinlessness, because good-
ness depends upon the inward motive, and the
perfection of the inward motive is not proved by the
outwax’d act.’ But surely the mii'acle is an outward
act, and to pass from it to the inner motive imposes a
greater strain upon logic than that involved in our
ordinary methods of estimating men. There is, at
least, moral congruity between the outward goodness
and the inner life, but there is no such congruity be-
tween the miracle and the life within. The test of
moral goodness laid down by Mr. Mozley is not the test
of John, who says, ‘He that doeth righteousness is
righteous ; ’ nor is it the test of Jesus : ‘ By their
fruits ye shall know them : do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles ? ’ But it is the test of
another : £ If thou be the Son of God, command that
these stones be made bread.’ For my own part, I
prefer the attitude of Fichte to that of Mr. Mozley.
‘The Jesus of John,’ says this noble and mighty thinkei',

‘ knows no other God than the True God, in whom we
all are, and live, and may be blessed, and out of whom
there is only Death and Nothingness. And,’ continues
Fichte, ‘he appeals, and rightly appeals, in support of
this truth, not to reasoning, but to the inward practi-
cal sense of truth in man, not even knowing any other
proof than this inward testimony, “ If any man will do
the will of Him who sent Me, he shall know of the doc-
trine whether it be of God.” ’

Accepting Mr. Mozley’s test, with which alone I am
now dealing, it is evident that, in the demonstration of

17

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

moral goodness, the quantity of the miraculous comes
into play. Had Christ, for example, limited himself to
the conversion of water into wine, He would have fallen
short of the performance of Jannes and Jambres ; for it
is a smaller thing- to convert one liquid into another
than to convert a dead rod into a living serpent. But
Jannes and Jambres, we are informed, were not good.
Hence, if Mr. Mozley’s test be a true one, a point must
exist, on the one side of which miraculous power demon-
strates goodness, while on the other side it does not.
How is this ‘ point of contrary flexure ’ to be deter-
mined ? It must lie somewhere between the magicians
and Moses, for within this space the power passed from,
the diabolical to the Divine. But how to mark the
point of passage — how, out of a purely quantitative
difference in the visible manifestation of power, we are
to infer a total inversion of quality — it is extremely
difficult to see. Moses, we are informed, produced a
large reptile ; Jannes and Jambres produced a small one.
I do not possess the intellectual faculty which would
enable me to infer, from those data, either the goodness
of the one or the badness of the other ; and in the
highest recorded manifestations of the miraculous I am
equally at a loss. Let us not play fast and loose with,
the miraculous ; either it is a demonstration of goodness
in all cases or in none. If Mr. Mozley accepts Christ’s
goodness as transcendent, because He did such works as
no other man did, he ought, logically speaking, to accept
the works of those who, in His name, had cast out devils,
as demonstrating a proportionate goodness on their part.
But it is people of this class who are consigned to ever-
lasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Such
zeal as that of Mr. Mozley for miracles tends, I fear,
to eat his religion up. The logical threatens to stifle
the spiritual. The truly religious soul needs no mira-
VOL. II. a

18

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

culous proof of the goodness of Christ. The words
addressed to Matthew at the receipt of custom required
no miracle to produce obedience. It was by no stroke
of the supernatural that Jesus caused those sent to seize
Him to go backward and fall to the ground. It was the
sublime and holy effluence from within, which needed
no prodigy to commend it to the reverence even of his
foes.

As regards the function of miracles in the founding
of a religion, Mr. Mozley institutes a comparison be-
tween the religion of Christ and that of Mahomet ; and
he derides the latter as 4 irrational ’ because it does not
profess to adduce miracles in proof of its supernatural
origin. But the religion of Mahomet, notwithstanding
this drawback, has thriven in the world, and at one time
it held sway over larger populations than Christianity
itself. The spread and influence of Christianity are,
however, brought forward by Mr. Mozley as ‘a per-
manent, enormous, and incalculable practical result ’ of
Christian miracles ; and he makes use of this result to
strengthen his plea for the miraculous. His logical
warrant for this proceeding is not clear. It is the
method of science, when a phenomenon presents itself,
towards the production of which several elements may
contribute, to exclude them one by one, so as to arrive
at length at the truly effective cause. Heat, for exam-
ple, is associated with a phenomenon ; we exclude heat,
but the phenomenon remains: hence, heat is not its cause.
Magnetism is associated with a phenomenon ; we exclude
magnetism, but the phenomenon remains: hence, magnet-
ism is not its cause. Thus, also, when we seek the cause
of a diffusion of a religion — whether it be due to miracles,
or to the spiritual force of its founders— we exclude the
miracles, and, finding the result unchanged, we infer that
miracles are not the effective cause. This important ex-

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 19

periment Mahometanism has made for us. It has lived
and spread without miracles ; and to assert, in the face of
this, that Christianity has spread because of miracles, is, I
submit, opposed both to the spirit of science and the
common sense of mankind.

The incongruity of inferring moral goodness from
miraculous power has been dwelt upon above ; in another
particular also the strain put by Mr. Mozley upon mira-
cles is, I think, more than they can bear. In consis-
tency with his principles, it is difficult to see how he is
to draw from the miracles of Christ any certain conclu-
sion as to His Divine nature. He dwells very forcibly
on what he calls 4 the argument from experience,’ in the
demolition of which he takes obvious delight. He
destroys the argument, and repeats it, for the mere
pleasure of again and again knocking the breath out of
it. Experience, he urges, can only deal with the past ;
and the moment we attempt to project experience a
hair’s-breadth beyond the point it has at any moment
reached, we are condemned by reason. It appears to
me that when he infers from Christ’s miracles a Divine
and altogether superhuman energy, Mr. Mozley places
himself precisely under this condemnation. For what
is his logical ground for concluding that the miracles of
the New Testament illustrate Divine power ? May they
not be the result of expanded human power ? A miracle
he defines as something impossible to man. But how
does he know that the miracles of the New Testament
are impossible to man ? Seek as he may, he has ab-
solutely no reason to adduce save this — that man has
never hitherto accomplished such things. But does the
fact that man has never raised the dead prove that he
can never raise the dead ? 4 Assuredly not,’ must be

Mr. Mozley’s reply ; 4 for this would be pushing ex-
perience beyond the limit it has now reached— which I

20

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

pronounce unlawful.’ Then a period may come when
man will be able to raise the dead. If this he conceded
— and I do not see how Mr. Mozley can avoid the con-
cession— it destroys the necessity of inferring Christ’s
Divinity from His miracles. He, it may he contended,
antedated the humanity of the future ; as a mighty tidal
wave leaves high upon the heach a mark which by-and-
hy becomes the general level of the ocean. Turn the
matter as you will, no other warrant will be found for the
all-important conclusion that Christ’s miracles demon-
strate Divine power, than an argument which has been
stigmatised by Mr. Mozley as a ‘ rope of sand ’ — the
argument from experience.

The learned Bampton Lecturer would be in this
position, even had he seen with his own eyes every
miracle recorded in the New Testament. But he has
not seen these miracles ; and his intellectual plight is
therefore worse. He accepts these miracles on testimony.
Why does he believe that testimony ? How does he
know that it is not delusion ; how is he sure that it is
not even fraud ? He will answer, that the writing bears
the marks of sobriety and truth ; and that in many cases
the bearers of this message to mankind sealed it with
their blood. Granted with all my heart ; but whence
the value of all this ? Is it not solely derived from the
fact that men, as we knoiv them, do not sacrifice their
lives in the attestation of that which they know to be
untrue ? Does not the entire value of the testimony of
the Apostles depend ultimately upon our experience of
human nature ? It appears, then, that those said to have
seen the miracles, based their inferences from what they
saw on the argument from experience ; and that Mr.
Mozley bases his belief in their testimony on the same
argument. The weakness of his conclusion is quad-
rupled by this double insertion of a principle of belief,

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

21

to which he flatly denies rationality. His reasoning, in
fact, cuts two ways — if it destroys our trust in the order
of nature, it far more effectually abolishes the basis
on which Mr. Mozley seeks to found the Christian re-
ligion.

Over this argument from experience, which at bottom
is his argument, Mr. Mozley rides rough-shod. There
is a dash of scorn in the energy with which he tramples
on it. Probably some previous writbr had made too
much of it, and thus invited his powerful assault.
Finding the difficulty of belief in miracles to rise from
their being in contradiction to the order of nature, he
sets himself to examine the grounds of our belief in
that order. With a vigour of logic rarely equalled, and
with a confidence in its conclusions never surpassed, he
disposes of this belief in a manner calculated to startle
those who, without due examination, had come to the
conclusion that the order of nature was secure.

What we mean, he says, by our belief in the order
of nature, is the belief that the future will be like the
past. There is not, according to Mr. Mozley, the slight-
est rational basis for this belief.

‘ That any cause in nature is more permanent than its
existing and known effects, extending further, and about to
produce other and more instances besides what it has pro-
duced already, we have no evidence. Let us imagine,’ he
continues, ‘ the occurrence of a particular physical pheno-
menon for the first time. Upon that single occurrence we
should have but the very faintest expectation of another.
Lf it did occur again, once or twice, so far from counting on
another occurrence, a cessation would occur as the most
natural event to us. But let it continue one hundred times,
and we should find no hesitation in inviting persons from a
distance to see it ; and if it occurred every day for years, its
occurrence would be a certainty to us, its cessation a

22

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

marvel. . . What ground of reason can we assign for an
expectation that any part of the course of nature will be the
next moment what it has been up to this moment, i.e. for our
belief in the uniformity of nature? None. No demonstra-
tive reason can be given, for the contrary to the recurrence
of a fact of nature is no contradiction. No probable reason
can be given ; for all probable reasoning respecting the
course of nature is founded upon this presumption of like-
ness, and therefore cannot be the foundation of it. No rea-
son can be given /or this belief. It is without a reason.
It rests upon no rational grounds, and can be traced to no
rational principle.’

‘ Everything,’ Mr. Mozley, however, adds, ‘ depends
upon this belief, every provision we make for the future,
every safeguard and caution we employ against it, all
calculation, all adjustment of means to ends, supposes
this belief ; and yet this belief has no more producible

reason for it than a speculation of fancy It is

necessary, all-important for the purposes of life, but
solely practical, and possesses no intellectual character.
.... The proper function,’ continues Mr. Mozley, ‘ of
the inductive principle, the argument from experience,
the belief in the order of nature — by whatever phrase we
designate the same instinct — is to operate as a practical
basis for the affairs of life and the carrying on of human
society.’ To sum up, the belief in the order of nature
is general, but it is ‘ an unintelligent impulse, of which
we can give no rational account.’ It is inserted into
our constitution solely to induce us to till our fields, to
raise our winter fuel, and thus to meet the future on
the perfectly gratuitous supposition that it will be like
the past.

4 Thus, step by step,’ says Mr. Mozley, with the em-
phasis of a man who feels his position to be a strong one,

‘ has philosophy loosened the connection of the order of

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

23

nature with the ground of reason, befriending in exact
proportion as it has done this the principle of miracles.’
For 4 this belief not having itself a foundation in reason,
the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained
that miracles, as opposed to the order of nature, are
opposed to reason.’ When we regard this belief in con-
nection with science, 4 in which connection it receives a
more imposing name, and is called the inductive prin-
ciple,’ the result is the same. 4 The inductive principle
is only this unreasoning impulse applied to a scientifically

ascertained fact Science has led up to the fact ;

but there it stops, and for converting this fact into a
law, a totally unscientific principle comes into play, the
same as that which generalises the commonest observa-
tion of nature.’

The eloquent pleader of the cause of miracles passes
over without a word the results of scientific investiga-
tion, as proving anything rational regarding the prin-
ciples or method by which such results have been
achieved. Here, as elsewhere, he declines the test, 4 By
their fruits shall ye know them.’ Perhaps our best way
of proceeding will be to give one or two examples of the
mode in which men of science apply the unintelligent
impulse with which Mr. Mozley credits them, and which
shall show, by illustration, the surreptitious method
whereby they climb from the region of facts to that of
laws.

Before the sixteenth century it was known that
water rises in a pump ; the effect being then explained
by the maxim that 4 Nature abhors a vacuum.’ It was
not known that there was any limit to the- height to
which the water would ascend, until, on one occasion,
the gardeners of Florence, while attempting to raise
water to a very great elevation, found that the column
ceased at a height of thirty-two feet. Beyond this all

24

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the skill of the pump-maker could not get it to rise.
The fact was brought to the notice of Galileo, and he,
soured by a world which had not treated his science
over kindly, is said to have twitted the philosophy of
the time by remarking that nature evidently abhorred a
vacuum only to a height of thirty-two feet. Galileo,
however, did not solve the problem. It was taken up
by his pupil Torricelli, to whom, after due pondering,
the thought occurred, that the water might be forced into
the tube by a pressure applied to the surface of the liquid
outside. But where, under the actual circumstances,
was such a pressure to be found ? After much reflection,
it flashed upon Torricelli that the atmosphere might
possibly exert this pressure ; that the impalpable air
might possess weight, and that a column of water thirty-
two feet high might be of the exact weight necessary to
hold the pressure of the atmosphere in equilibrium.

There is much in this process of pondering and its
results which it is impossible to analyse. It is by a kind
of inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous
contemplation of facts to the principles on which they
depend. The mind is, as it were, a photographic plate,
which is gradually cleansed by the effort to think rightly,
and which, when so cleansed, and not before, receives
impressions from the light of truth. This passage from
facts to principles is called induction ; and induction,
in its highest form, is, as I have just stated, a kind of
inspiration. But, to make it sure, the inward sight
must be shown to be in accordance with outward fact.
To. prove or disprove the induction, we must resort to
deduction and experiment.

Torricelli reasoned thus: If a column of water thirty-
two feet high holds the pressure of the atmosphere in
equilibrium, a shorter column of a heavier liquid ought
to do the same. Now, mercury is thirteen times heavier

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

25

than water ; hence, if my induction he correct, the at-
mosphere ought to be able to sustain only thirty inches
of mercury. Here, then, is a deduction which can be
immediately submitted to experiment. Torricelli took
a glass tube a yard or so in length, closed at one end
and open at the other, and filling it with mercury, he
stopped the open end with his thumb, and inverted it
into a basin filled with the liquid metal. One can
imagine the feeling with which Torricelli removed his
thumb, and the delight he experienced on finding that
his thought had forestalled a fact never before revealed
to human eyes. The column sank, but it ceased to sink
at a height of thirty inches, leaving the Torricellian
vacuum over-head. From that hour the theory of the
pump was established.

The celebrated Pascal followed Torricelli with another
deduction. He reasoned thus : If the mercurial column
be supported by the atmosphere, the higher we ascend in
the air, the lower the column ought to sink, for the less
will be the weight of the air overhead. He caused a
friend to ascend the Puy de Dome, carrying with him a
barometric column ; and it was found that during the
ascent the column sank, and that during the subsequent
descent the column rose.

Between the time here referred to and the present,
millions of experiments have been made upon this sub-
ject. Every village pump is an apparatus for such ex-
periments. In thousands of instances, moreover, pumps
have refused to work ; but on examination it has in-
fallibly been found that the well was dry, that the pump
required priming, or that some other defect in the
apparatus accounted for the anomalous action. In every
case of the kind the skill of the pump-maker has been
found to be the true remedy. In no case has the
pressure of the atmosphere ceased ; constancy, as regards

2G

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the lifting of pump-water, has been hitherto the demon-
strated rule of natux-e. So also as regards Pascal’s
experiment. Iiis experience has been the universal
experience ever since. Men have climbed mountains,
and gone up in balloons ; but no deviation from Pascal’s
result has ever been observed. Barometers, like pumps,
have refused to act ; but instead of indicating any sus-
pension of the operations of nature, or any interference
on the part of its Author with atmospheric pressure,
examination has in every instance fixed the anomaly
upon the instruments themselves. It is this welding,
then, of rigid logic to verifying fact that Mr. Mozley
refers to an ‘ unreasoning impulse.’

Let us now briefly consider the case of Newton.
Before his time men had occupied themselves with the
problem of the solar system. Kepler had deduced, from
a vast mass of observations, those general expressions of
planetary motion known as 4 Kepler’s laws.’ It had
been observed that a magnet attracts iron ; and by one
of those flashes of inspiration which reveal to the human
mind the vast in the minute, the general in the parti-
cular, it had been inferred, that the force by which
bodies fall to the earth might also be an attraction.
Newton pondered all these things. He looked, as was
his wont, into the darkness until it became entirely
luminous. How this light arises we cannot explain ;
but, as a matter of fact, it does arise. Let me remark
here, that this kind of pondering is a process with which
the ancients could have been but imperfectly acquainted.
They, for the most part, found the exercise of fantasy
more pleasant than careful observation, and subsequent
brooding over facts. Hence it is, that when those whose
education has been derived from the ancients speak of
‘ the reason of man,’ they are apt to omit from their
conception of reason one of its most important factors.

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

27

Well, Newton slowly marshalled his thoughts, or rather
they came to him while he ‘ intended his mind,’ rising
like a series of intellectual births out of chaos. He
made this idea of attraction his own. But, to apply
the idea to the solar system, it was necessary to know
the magnitude of the attraction, and the law of its varia-
tion with the distance. His conceptions first of all
passed from the action of the earth as a whole, to that
of its constituent particles. And persistent thought
brought more and more clearly out the final conclusion,
that every particle of matter attracts every other particle
with a force varying inversely as the square of the dis-
tance between the particles.

Here we have the flower and outcome of Newton’s
induction ; and how to verify it, or to disprove it, was
the next question. The first step of the philosopher in
this direction was to prove, mathematically, that if this
law of attraction be the true one ; if the earth be
constituted of particles which obey this law ; then the
action of a sphere equal to the earth in size on a body
outside of it, is the same as that which would be
exerted if the whole mass of the sphere were contracted
to a point at its centre. Practically speaking, then,
the centre of the earth is the point from which distances
must be measured to bodies attracted by the earth.

From experiments executed before his time,
Newton knew the amount of the earth’s attraction at
the earth’s surface, or at a distance of 4,000 miles from
its centre. His object now was to measure the attrac-
tion at a greater distance, and thus to determine the
law of its diminution. But how was he to find a body
at a sufficient distance ? He had no balloon ? and even
if he had, he knew that any height to which he could
attain would be too small to enable him to solve his
problem. What did he do? He fixed his thoughts

O

28

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

upon the moon ; — a body 240,000 miles, or sixty times
the earth’s radius, from the earth’s centre. He
virtually weighed the moon, and found that weight to
be 3 6}0 0th of what it would be at the earth’s surface.
This is exactly what his theory required. I will not
dwell here upon the pause of Newton after his first cal-
culations, or speak of his self-denial in withholding
them because they did not quite agree with the
observations then at his command. Newton’s action in
this matter is the normal action of the scientific mind.
If it were otherwise — if scientific men were not accus-
tomed to demand verification — if they were satisfied
with the imperfect while the perfect is attainable, their
science, instead of being, as it is, a fortress of adamant,
would be a house of clay, ill-fitted to bear the buffetings
of the theologic storms to which it is periodically
exposed.

Thus we see that Newton, like Torricelli, first pon-
dered his facts, illuminated them with persistent
thought, and finally divined the character of the force
of gravitation. But, having thus travelled inward to
the principle, he reversed his steps, carried the principle
outwards, and justified it by demonstrating its fitness
to external nature.

And here, in passing, I would notice a point which
is well worthy of attention. Kepler had deduced his
laws from observation. As far back as those observa-
tions extended, the planetary motions had obeyed these
laws ; and neither Kepler nor Newton entertained a
doubt as to their continuing to obey them. Year after
year, as the ages rolled, they believed that those laws
would continue to illustrate themselves in the heavens.
But this was not sufficient. The scientific mind can
find no repose in the mere registration of sequence in
nature. The further question intrudes itself with

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

29

resistless might, Whence comes the sequence ? What
is it that binds the consequent to its antecedent in
nature ? The truly scientific intellect never can attain
rest until it reaches the forces by which the observed
succession is produced. It was thus with Torricelli ; it
was thus with Newton ; it is thus pre-eminently with
the scientific man of to-day. In common with the
most ignorant, he shares the belief that spring will
succeed winter, that summer will succeed spring, that
autumn will succeed summer, and that winter will
succeed autumn. But he knows still further — and this
knowledge is essential to his intellectual repose — that
this succession, besides being permanent, is, under the
circumstances, necessary ; that the gravitating force
exerted between the sun and a revolving sphere with
an axis inclined to the plane of its orbit, must produce
the observed succession of the seasons. Not until this
relation between forces and phenomena has been
established, is the law of reason rendered concentric
with the law of nature ; and not until this is effected
does the mind of the scientific philosopher rest in
peace.

The expectation of likeness, then, in the procession
of phenomena, is not that on which the scientific mind
founds its belief in the order of nature. If the force be
‘permanent the phenomena are necessary , whether they
resemble or do not resemble anything that has gone
before. Hence, in judging of the order of nature, our
enquiries eventually relate to the permanence of force.
From Galileo to Newton, from Newton to our own
time, eager eyes have been scanning the heavens, and
clear heads have been pondering the phenomena of the
solar system. The same eyes and minds have been also
observing, experimenting, and reflecting on the action
of gravity at the surface of the earth. Nothing has

30

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

occurred to indicate that the operation of the law has
for a moment been suspended ; nothing has ever
intimated that nature has been crossed by spontaneous
action, or that a state of tilings at any time existed
which could not be rigorously deduced from the
preceding state.

Given the distribution of matter, and the forces in
operation, in the time of Galileo, the competent mathe-
matician of that day could predict what is now occurring
in our own. We calculate eclipses in advance, and find
our calculations true to the second. We determine the
dates of those that have occurred in the early times of
history, and find calculation and history in harmony.
Anomalies and perturbations in the planets have been
over and over again observed ; but these, instead of
demonstrating any inconstancy on the part of natural
law, have invariably been reduced to consequences of
that law. Instead of referring the perturbations of
Uranus to any interference on the part of the Author
of nature with the law of gravitation, the question
which the astronomer proposed to himself was, 4 How,
in accordance with this law, can the perturbation be
produced?’ Guided by a principle, he was enabled to
fix the point of space in which, if a mass of matter
were placed, the observed perturbations would follow.
We know the result. The practical astronomer turned
his telescope towards the region which the intellect of
the theoretic astronomer had already explored, and the
planet now named Neptune was found in its predicted
place. A very respectable outcome, it will be admitted,
of an impulse which 4 rests upon no rational grounds,
and can be traced to no rational principle ; ’ which
possesses 4 no intellectual character ; ’ which 4 philo-
sophy ’ has uprooted from 4 the ground of reason,’ and
fixed in that 4 large irrational department ’ discovered

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES.

31

for it, by Mr. Mozley, in the hitherto unexplored
wilderness of the human mind.

The proper function of the inductive principle, or
the belief in the order of nature, says Mr. Mozley, is
‘ to act as a practical basis tor the affairs of life, and
the carrying on of human society.’ But what, it may
be asked, has the planet Neptune, or the belts of
Jupiter, or the whiteness about the poles of Mars, to do
with the affairs of society? How is society affected
by the fact that the sun’s atmosphere contains sodium,
or that the nebula of Orion contains hydrogen gas ?
Nineteen-twentieths of the force employed in the
exercise of the inductive principle, which, reiterates
Mr. Mozley, is ‘ purely practical,’ have been expended
upon subjects as unpractical as these. What practical
interest has society in the fact that the spots on the
sun have a decennial period, and that when a magnet
is closely watched for half a century, it is found to
perform small motions which synchronise with the
appearance and disappearance of the solar spots ? And
yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine would deem a life
of intellectual toil amply rewarded by being privileged
to solve, at its close, these infinitesimal motions.

The inductive principle is founded in man’s desire
to know — a desire arising from his position among
phenomena which are reducible to order by his intellect.
The material universe is the complement of the intel-
lect ; and, without the study of its laws, reason could
never have awakened to the higher forms of self-
consciousness at all. It is the Non-ego through and
by which the Ego is endowed with self-discernment.
We hold it to be an exercise of reason to explore the
meaning of a universe to which we stand in this
relation, and the work we have accomplished is the
proper commentary on the methods we have pursued.

32

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Before these methods were adopted the unbridled
imagination roamed through nature, putting in the
place of law the figments of superstitious dread. For
thousands of years witchcraft, and magic, and miracles,
and special providences, and Mr. Mozley’s 4 distinctive
reason of man,’ had the world to themselves. They
made worse than nothing of it— worse, I say, because
they let and hindered those who might have made
something of it. Hence it is, that during a single life-
time of this era of 4 unintelligent impulse,’ the progress
in knowledge is all but infinite as compared with that
of the ages which preceded ours.

The believers in magic and miracles of a couple of
centuries ago had all the strength of Mr. Mozley’s
present logic on their side. They had done for them-
selves what he rejoices in having so effectually done for
us — -cleared the ground of the belief in the order of
nature, and declared magic, miracles, and witchcraft to
be matters for 4 ordinary evidence ’ to decide. 4 The
principle of miracles ’ thus 4 befriended ’ had free scope,
and we know the result. Lacking that rock-barrier of
natural knowledge which we now possess, keen jurists
and cultivated men were hurried on to deeds, the bare
recital of which makes the blood run cold. Skilled in
all the rules of human evidence, and versed in all the
arts of cross-examination, these men, nevertheless, went
systematically astray, and committed the deadliest
wrongs against humanity. And why? Because they
could not put Nature into the witness-box, and question

her of her voiceless ‘ testimony ’ they knew nothing.

In all cases between man and man, their judgment was
to be relied on; but in all cases between man and
nature, they were blind leaders of the blind.1

1 ‘ In 1664 two women were hung in Suffolk, under a sentence
of Sir Matthew Hale, who took the opportunity of declaring that

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES

33

Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be no great
result if miracles were only accepted by the ignorant
and superstitious, ‘ because it is easy to satisfy those
who do not enquire.’ But he does consider it 6 a great
result ’ that they have been accepted by the educated.
In what sense educated? Like those statesmen, jurists,
and church dignitaries whose education was unable to
save them from the frightful errors glanced at above ?
Not even in this sense ; for the great mass of Mr.
Mozley’s educated people had no legal training, and
must have been absolutely defenceless against delusions
which could set even that training at naught. Like
nine-tenths of our clergy at the present day, they were
versed in the literature of Greece, Rome, and Judea;
but as regards a knowledge of nature, which is here the
one thing needful, they were ‘ noble savages,’ and
nothing more. In the case of miracles, then, it
behoves us to understand the weight of the negative,
before we assign a value to the positive ; to comprehend
the depositions of nature, before we attempt to measure,
with them, the evidence of men. We have only to
open our eyes to see what honest and even intellectual
men and women are capable of, as to judging evidence,
in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and in
latitude fifty-two degrees north. The experience thus
gained ought, I imagine, to influence our opinion
regarding the testimony of people inhabiting a sunnier
clime, with a richer imagination, and without a particle

the reality of witchcraft was unquestionable ; “ for first, the
Scriptures had affirmed so much ; and secondly, the wisdom of all
nations had provided laws against such persons, which is an argu-
ment of their confidence of such a crime.” Sir Thomas Browne,
who was a great physician as well as a great writer, was called as a
witness, and swore “that he was clearly of opinion that the persons
were bewitched.” ’ — Lecky’s History of Rationalism, vol. i. p. 120.

VOL. II. D

34

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of that restraint which the discoveries of physical
science have imposed upon mankind.

Having thus submitted Mr. Mozley’s views to the
examination which they challenged at the hands of a
student of nature, I am unwilling to quit his book with-
out expressing my admiration of his genius, and my
respect for his character. Though barely known to him
personally, his recent death affected me as that of a friend.
With regard to the style of his book, I heartily sub-
scribe to the description with which the 4 Times ’ winds
up its able and appreciative review. 4 It is marked
throughout with the most serious and earnest convic-
tion, but is without a single word from first to last of
asperity or insinuation against opponents ; and this not
from any deficiency of feeling as to the importance of
the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely main-
tained self-control, and from an over-ruling, ever-
present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a
more than judicial calmness.’

[To the argument regarding the quantity of the
miraculous, introduced at page 17, Mr. Mozley has
done me the honour of publishing a Reply in the
seventh volume of the 4 Contemporary Review.’ --
J. T.l

35

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES.

Among the scraps of manuscript, written at the time
when Mr. Mozley’s work occupied my attention, I find
the following reflections : —

With regard to the influence of modern science
which Mr. Mozley rates so low, one obvious effect of it
is to enhance the magnitude of many of the recorded
miracles, and to increase proportionably the difficulties
of belief. The ancients knew but little of the vastness
of the universe. The Rev. Mr. Kirkman, for example,
has shown what inadequate notions the Jews entertained
regarding the 4 firmament of heaven ; ’ and Sir George
Airy refers to the case of a Greek philosopher who was
persecuted for hazarding the assertion, then deemed
monstrous, that the sun might be as large as the whole
country of Greece. The concerns of a universe, regarded
from this point of view, were much more commensu-
rate with man and his concerns than those of the
universe which science now reveals to us ; and hence
that to suit man’s purposes, or that in compliance with
his prayers, changes should occur in the order of the
universe, was more easy of belief in the ancient world
than it can be now. In the very magnitude which it
assigns to natural phenomena, science has augmented
the distance between them and man, and increased
the popular belief in their orderly progression.

As a natural consequence the demand for evidence
is more exacting than it used to be, whenever it is
affirmed that the order of nature has been disturbed.
Let us take as an illustration the miracle by which the
victory of Joshua over the Amorites was rendered com-

n 2

36

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

plete. In this case the sun is reported to have stood still
for ‘ about a whole day ’ upon Gibeon, and the moon
in the valley of Ajalon. An Englishman of average
education at the present day woidd naturally demand a
greater amount of evidence to prove that this occurrence
took place, than would have satisfied an Israelite in the
age succeeding that of Joshua. For to the one, the mira-
cle probably consisted in the stoppage of a fiery ball less
than a yard in diameter, while to the other it would be
the stoppage of an orb fourteen hundred thousand times
the earth in size. And even accepting the interpreta-
tion that Joshua dealt with what was apparent merely,
but that what really occurred was the suspension of the
earth’s rotation. I think the right to exercise a greater
reserve in accepting the miracle, and to demand stronger
evidence in support of it than that which would have
satisfied an ancient Israelite, will still be conceded to a
man of science.

There is a scientific as well as an historic imagi-
nation ; and when, by the exercise of the former, the
stoppage of the earth’s rotation is clearly realised, the
event assumes proportions so vast, in comparison with
the result to be obtained by it, that belief reels under
the reflection. The energy here involved is equal to that
of six trillions of horses working for the whole of the
time employed by Joshua in the destruction of his foes.
The amount of power thus expended would be sufficient
to supply every individual of an army a thousand times
the strength of that of Joshua, with a thousand times
the fighting power of each of Joshua’s soldiers, not for
the few hours necessary to the extinction of a handful
of Amorites, but for millions of years. All this
wonder is silently passed over by the sacred historian,
manifestly because he knew nothing about it. Whether,
therefore, we consider the miracle as purely evidential,

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES.

37

or as a practical means of vengeance, the same lavish
squandering of energy stares us in the face. It
evidential, the energy was wasted, because the Israelites
knew nothing of its amount ; if simply destructive, then
the ratio of the quantity lost to the quantity employed,
may be inferred from the foregoing figures.

To other miracles similar remarks apply. Trans-
ferring our thoughts from this little sand-grain of an
earth to the immeasurable heavens, where countless
worlds with freights of life probably revolve unseen, the
very suns which warm them being barely visible across
abysmal space ; reflecting that beyond these sparks of
solar fire, suns innumerable may burn, whose light can
never stir the optic nerve at all ; and bringing these
reflections face to face with the idea of the Builder and
Sustainer of it all showing Himself in a burning bush,
exhibiting His hinder parts, or behaving in other fami-
liar ways ascribed to Him in the Jewish Scriptures, the
incongruity must appear. Did this credulous prattle
of the ancients about miracles stand alone ; were it not
associated with words of imperishable wisdom, and with
examples of moral grandeur unmatched elsewhere in the
history of the human race, both the miracles and their
4 evidences ’ would have long since ceased to be the
transmitted inheritance of intelligent men. Influenced
by the thoughts which this universe inspires, well may
we exclaim in David’s spirit, if not in David’s words :
4 When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon, and the stars, which thou hast ordained ;
what is man that thou shouldst be mindful of him, or
the son of man that thou shouldst so regard him?’

If you ask me who is to limit the outgoings of
Almighty power, my answer is, Not I. If you should
urge that if the Builder and Maker of this universe
chose to stop the rotation of the earth, or to take the

38

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

form of a burning bush, there is nothing to prevent
Him from doing so, I am not prepared to contradict
you. I neither agree with you nor differ from you, for
it is a subject of which I know nothing. But I observe
that in such questions regarding Almighty power, your
enquiries relate, not to that power as it is actually dis-
played in the universe, but to the power of your own
imagination. Your question is, not has the Omnipotent
done so and so ? or is it in the least degree likely that
the Omnipotent should do so and so ? but, is my imagin-
ation competent to picture a Being able and willing to
do so and so ? I am not prepared to deny your com-
petence. To the human mind belongs the faculty of
enlarging and diminishing, of distorting and combining,
indefinitely the objects revealed by the senses. It can
imagine a mouse as large as an elephant, an elephant
as large as a mountain, and a mountain as high as the
stars. It can separate congruities and unite incon-
gruities. We see a fish and we see a woman ; we can
drop one half of each, and unite in idea the other two
halves to a mermaid. We see a horse and we see a
man ; we are able to drop one half of each, and unite
the other two halves to a centaur. Thus also the pic-
torial representations of the Deity, the bodies and wings
of cherubs and seraphs, the hoofs, horns, and tail of the
Evil One, the joys of the blessed, and the torments of
the damned, have been elaborated from materials fur-
nished to the imagination by the senses. It behoves
you and me to take care that our notions of the Power
which rules the universe are not mere fanciful or ignor-
ant enlargements of human power. The capabilities of
wbat you call your reason are not denied. By the
exercise of the faculty here adverted to, you can picture
to yourself a Being able and willing to do any and every
conceivable thing. You are right in saying that in

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES.

39

opposition to this Power science is of no avail — that it
is ‘ a weapon of air.’ The man of science, however,
while accepting the figure, would probably reverse its
application, thinking it is not science which is here the
thing of air, but that unsubstantial pageant of the
imagination to which the solidity of science is opposed.

40

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and mean-
ness.— Emerson.

III.

ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL
ENERGY.

TP HE Editor of the 4 Contemporary Review ’ is liberal
JL enough to grant me space for some remarks upon
a subject, which, though my relation to it was simply
that of a vehicle of transmission, has brought down upon
me a considerable amount of animadversion.

It may be interesting to some of my readers if I
glance at a few cases illustrative of the history of the
human mind, in relation to this and kindred questions.
In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was
deemed unscriptural and heretical. The pious Lactan-
tius was as angry with the people whodield this notion
as my censors are now with me, and quite as unsparing
in his denunciations of their 4 Monstrosities.’ Lactan-
tius was irritated because, in his mind, by education
and habit, cosmogony and religion were indissolubly asso-
ciated, and, therefore, simultaneously disturbed. In the
early part of the seventeenth century the notion that the
earth was fixed, and that the sun and stars revolved round
it daily, was interwoven with religious feeling, the separa-
tion then attempted by Galileo rousing the animosity
and kindling the persecution of the Church. Men still
living can remember the indignation excited by the first

ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 41

revelations of geology regarding the age of the earth,
the association between chronology and religion being
for the time indissoluble. In our day, however, the
best-informed theologians are prepared to admit that
our views of the Universe and its Author are not im-
paired, but improved, by the abandonment of the
Mosaic account of the Creation. Look, finally, at the
excitement caused by the publication of the 4 Origin of
Species ; ’ and compare it with the calm attendant on
the appearance of the far more outspoken, and, from
the old point of view, more impious, 4 Descent of Man.’
Thus religion survives after the removal of what had

O

been long considered essential to it. In our day the Anti-
podes are accepted ; the fixity of the earth is given
up ; the period of Creation and the reputed age of the
world are alike dissipated ; Evolution is looked upon
without terror ; and other changes have occurred in the
same direction too numerous to be dwelt upon here. In
fact, from the earliest times to the present, religion
has been undergoing a process of purification, freeing
itself slowly and painfully from the physical errors which
the active but uninformed intellect mingled with the
aspirations of the soul. Some of us think that a final
acc of purification is needed, while others oppose this
notion with the confidence and the warmth of ancient
times. The bone of contention at present is the
'physical value of prayer. It is not my wish to excite
surprise, much less to draw forth protest, by the
employment of this phrase. I would simply ask any
intelligent person to look the problem honestly in the
face, and then to say whether, in the estimation of the
great body of those who sincerely resort to it, prayer
does not, at all events upon special occasions, invoke a
Power which checks and augments the descent of rain,
which changes the force and direction of winds, which

42

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

affects the growth of corn and the health of men and
cattle — a Power, in short, which, when appealed to
under pressing circumstances, produces the precise
effects caused by physical energy in the ordinary course
of things. To any person who deals sincerely with the
subject, and refuses to blur his moral vision by in-
tellectual subtleties, this, I think, will appear a true
statement of the case.

It is under this aspect alone that the scientific
student, so far as I represent him, has any wish to
meddle with prayer. Forced upon his attention as a
form of physical energy, or as the equivalent of such
energy, he claims the right of subjecting it to those
methods of examination from which all our present
knowledge of the physical universe is derived. And
if his researches lead him to a conclusion adverse to
its claims — if his enquiries rivet him still closer to the
philosophy implied in the words, ‘ He maketh His sun
to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain
upon the just and upon the unjust’ — he contends only
for the displacement of prayer, not for its extinction.
He simply says, physical nature is not its legitimate
domain.

This conclusion, moreover, must be based on pure
physical evidence, and not on any inherent unreason-
ableness in the act of prayer. The theory that the
.system of nature is under the control of a Being who
changes phenomena in compliance with the prayers of
men, is, in my opinion, a perfectly legitimate one. It
may of course be rendered futile by being associated
with conceptions which contradict it; but such concep-
tions form no necessary part of the theory. It is a
matter of experience that an earthly father, who is
at the same time both wise and tender, listens to the
requests of his children, and, if they do not ask amiss,

ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 43

takes pleasure in granting their requests. We know
also that this compliance extends to the alteration,
within certain limits, of the current of events on earth.
With this suggestion offered by experience, it is no de-
parture from scientific method to place behind natural
phenomena a Universal Father, who, in answer to the
prayers of His children, alters the currents of those
phenomena. Thus far Theology and Science go hand
in hand. The conception of an aether, for example,
trembling with the waves of light, is suggested by the
ordinary phenomena of wave-motion in water and in
air ; and in like manner the conception of personal
volition in nature is suggested by the ordinary action
t of man upon earth. I therefore urge no impossibilities ,
though I am constantly charged with doing so. I do
not even urge inconsistency, but, on the contrary, frankly
admit that the theologian has as good a right to place
his conception at the root of phenomena as I have to
place mine.

But without verification a theoretic conception is
• a mere figment of the intellect, and I am sorry to find
us parting company at this point. The region of theory,
both in science and theology, lies behind the world of
the senses, but the verification of theory occurs in the
sensible world. To check the theory we have simply
to compare the deductions from it with the facts of
observation. If the deductions be in accordance with
the facts, we accept the theory : if in opposition, the
theory is given up. A single experiment is frequently
devised, by which the theory must stand or fall. Of
this character was the determination of the velocity of
I light in liquids, as a crucial test of the Emission
Theory. According to it, light travelled faster in.
water than in air ; according to the Undulatory
Theory, it travelled faster in air than in water. An

44

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

experiment suggested by Arago, and executed by
Fizeau and Foucault, was conclusive against Newton’s
theory.

But while science cheerfully submits to this ordeal, it
seems impossible to devise a mode of verification of their
theories which does not rouse resentment in theological
minds. Is it that, while the pleasure of the scientific
man culminates in the demonstrated harmony between
theory and fact, the highest pleasure of the religious
man has been already tasted in the very act of praying,
prior to verification, any further effort in this direction
being a mere disturbance of his peace ? Or is it that
we have before us a residue of that mysticism of the
middle ages, so admirably described by Whewell — that
‘ practice of referring things and events not to clear
and distinct notions, not to general rules capable of
direct verification, but to notions vague, distant, and
vast, which we cannot bring into contact with facts ;
as when we connect natural events with moral and
historic causes.’ 4 Thus,’ he continues, ‘ the character
of mysticism is that it refers particulars, not to genera-
lisations, homogeneous and immediate, but to such as
are heterogeneous and remote ; to which we must add,
that the process of this reference is not a calm act of
the intellect, but is accompanied with a glow of
enthusiastic feeling.’

Every feature here depicted, and some more
questionable ones, have shown themselves of late ; most
conspicuously, I regret to say, in the ‘leaders’ of a
weekly journal of considerable influence, and one, on
many grounds, entitled to the respect of thoughtful
men. In the correspondence, however, published by
the same journal, are to be found two or thi’ee letters
well calculated to correct the temporary flightiness of
the journal itself.

ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 45

It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than
solemnly of the feeling which prompts prayer. It is a
power which I should like to see guided, not extin-
guished— devoted to practicable objects instead of wasted
upon air. In some form or other, not yet evident, it
may, as alleged, be necessary to man’s highest culture.
Certain it is that, while I rank many persons who resort
to prayer low in the scale of being — natural foolishness,
bigotry, and intolerance being in their case intensified
by the notion that they have access to the ear of God
— I regard others who employ it, as forming part of
the very cream of the earth. The faith that adds to
the folly and ferocity of the one is turned to enduring
sweetness, holiness, abounding charity, and self-sacrifice
by the other. Religion, in fact, varies with the nature
upon which it falls. Often unreasonable, if not contemp-
tible, prayer, in its purer forms, hints at disciplines which
few of us can neglect without moral loss. But no good
can come of giving it a delusive value, by claiming for
it a power in physical nature. It may strengthen the
heart to meet life’s losses, and thus indirectly promote
physical well-being, as the digging of ^Esop’s orchard
brought a treasure of fertility greater than the golden
treasure sought. Such indirect issues we all admit ;
but it would be simply dishonest to affirm that it is
such issues that are always in view. Here, for the
present, I must end. I ask no space to reply to those
railers who make such free use of the terms insolence,
outrage, profanity, and blasphemy. They obviously
i lack the sobriety of mind necessary to give accuracy to
their statements, or to render their charges worthy of
serious refutation.

46

fragments of science.

IV.

VITALITY.

rpHE origin, growth, and energies of living things are
JL subjects which have always engaged the attention
of thinking men. To account for them it was usual
to assume a special agent, free to a great extent from
the limitations observed among the powers of inor-
ganic nature. This agent was called vital force ; and,
under its influence, plants and animals were supposed
to collect their materials and to assume determinate
forms. Within the last few years, however, our ideas
of vital processes have undergone profound modifica-
tions ; and the interest, and even disquietude, which
the change has excited are amply evidenced by the
discussions and protests which are now common, re-
garding the phenomena of vitality. In tracing these
phenomena through all their modifications, the most
advanced philosophers of the present day declare that
they ultimately arrive at a single source of power, from
which all vital energy is derived ; and the disquieting
circumstance is that this source is not the direct fiat of
a supernatural agent, but a reservoir of what, if we do
not accept the creed of Zoroaster, must be regarded as
inorganic force. In short, it is considered as proved
that all the energy which we derive from plants and
animals is drawn from the sun.

A few years ago, when the sun was affirmed to be
the source of life, nine out of ten of those who are
alarmed by the form which this assertion has latterly

VITALITY.

47

assumed would have assented, in a general way, to its
correctness. Their assent, however, was more poetic
than scientific, and they were by no means prepared to
see a rigid mechanical signification attached to their
words. This, however, is the peculiarity of modern
conclusions : — that there is no creative energy what-
ever in the vegetable or animal organism, but that all
the power which we obtain from the muscles of man
and animals, as much as that which we develop by the
combustion of wood or coal, has been produced at the
sun’s expense. The sun is so much the colder that we
may have our fires ; he is also so much the colder that
we may have our horse-racing and Alpine climbing. It
is, for example, certain that the sun has been chilled
to an extent capable of being accurately expressed in
numbers, in order to furnish the power which lifted this
year a certain number of tourists from the vale of
Chamouni to the summit of Mont Blanc.

To most minds, however, the energy of light and
heat presents itself as a thing totally distinct from
ordinary mechanical energy. Either of them can never-
theless be derived from the other. Wood can be raised
by friction to the temperature of ignition ; while by
properly striking a piece of iron a skilful blacksmith

Ican cause it to glow. Thus, by the rude agency of his
hammer, he generates light and heat. This action, if
carried far enough, would produce the light and heat of
the sun. In fact, the sun’s light and heat have actually
been referred to the fall of meteoric matter upon his
surface ; and whether the sun is thus supported or not,
it is perfectly certain that he might be thus supported.
Whether, moreover, the whilom molten condition of our
planet was, as supposed by eminent men, due to the
collision of cosmic masses or not, it is perfectly certain
that the molten condition might be thus brought about.

4B

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

If, then, solar light and heat can be produced by the
impact of dead matter, and if from the light and heat
thus produced we can derive the energies which we
have been accustomed to call vital, it indubitably
follows that vital energy may have a proximately
mechanical origin.

In what sense, then, is the sun to be regarded as
the origin of the energy derivable from plants and
animals ? Let us try to give an intelligible answer to
this question. Water may be raised from the sea- level
to a high elevation, and then permitted to descend.
In descending it may be made to assume various
forms — to fall in cascades, to spurt in fountains, to
boil in eddies, or to flow tranquilly along a uniform bed.
It may, moreover, be caused to set complex machinery
in motion, to turn millstones, throw shuttles, work saws
and hammers, and drive piles. But every form of
power here indicated would be derived from the original
power expended in raising the water to the height from
which it fell. There is no energy generated by the
machinery : the work performed by the water in de-
scending is merely the parcelling out and distribution
of the work expended in raising it. In precisely this
sense is all the energy of plants and animals the par-
celling out and distribution of a power originally exerted
by the sun. In the case of the water, the source of the
power consists in the forcible separation of a quantity
of the liquid from a low level of the earth’s surface,
and its elevation to a higher position, the power thus
expended being returned by the water in its descent.
In the case of vital phenomena, the source of power
consists in the forcible separation of the atoms of com-
pound substances by the sun. We name the force
which draws the water earthward ‘gravity,’ and that
which draws atoms together ‘chemical affinity’; but

VITALITY.

49

these different names must not mislead us regarding
the qualitative identity of the two forces. They are
both attractions ; and, to the intellect, the falling of
carbon atoms against oxygen atoms is not more dif-
ficult of conception than the falling of water to the
earth.

The building up of the vegetable, then, is effected
by the sun, through the reduction of chemical com-
pounds. The phenomena of animal life are more or
less complicated reversals of these processes of reduc-
tion. We eat the vegetable, and we breathe the
oxygen of the air; and in our bodies the oxygen,
which had been lifted from the carbon and hydrogen
by the action of the sun, again falls towards them,
producing animal heat and developing animal forms.
Through the most complicated phenomena of vitality
this law runs : — the vegetable is produced while a
weight rises, the animal is produced while a weight
falls. But the question is not exhausted here. The
water employed in our first illustration generates all the
motion displayed in its descent, but the form of the
motion depends on the character of the machinery
interposed in the path of the water. In a similar way,
the primary action of the sun’s rays is qualified by the
atoms and molecules among which their energy is dis-
tributed. Molecular forces determine the form which
the solar energy will assume. In the separation of the
carbon and oxygen this energy may be so conditioned

I as to result in one case in the formation of a cabbage,
and in another case in the formation of an oak. So
also, as regards the reunion of the carbon and the oxy-
gen, the molecular machinery through which the com-
bining energy acts may, in one case, weave the texture
of a frog, while in another it may weave the texture
of a man.

VOL. II. e

50

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

The matter of the animal body is that of inorganic
nature. There is no substance in the animal tissues
which is not primarily derived from the rocks, the
water, and the air. Are the forces of organic matter,
then, different in kind from those of inorganic matter ?
The philosophy of the present day negatives the ques-
tion. It is the compounding, in the organic world, of
forces belonging equally to the inorganic, that con-
stitutes the mystery and the miracle of vitality. Every
portion of every animal body may be reduced to purely
inorganic matter. A perfect reversal of this process
of reduction would carry us from the inorganic to the
organic ; and such a reversal is at least conceivable.
The tendency, indeed, of modern science is to break
down the wall of partition between organic and in-
organic, and to reduce both to the operation of forces
which are the same in kind, but which are differently
compounded.

Consider the question of personal identity, in
relation to that of molecular form. Thirty-four years
ago, Mayer of Heilbronn, with that power of genius
which breathes large meanings into scanty facts, pointed
out that the blood was ‘ the oil of the lamp of life,’ the
combustion of which sustains muscular action. The
muscles are the machinery by which the dynamic power
of the blood is brought into play. Thus the blood is
consumed. But the whole body, though more slowly than
the blood, wastes also, so that after a certain number of
years it is entirely renewed. How is the sense of per-
sonal identity maintained across this flight of mole-
cules ? To man, as we know him, matter is necessary
to consciousness ; but the matter of any period may be
all changed, while consciousness exhibits no solution
of continuity. Like changing sentinels, the oxygen,
hydrogen, and carbon that depart, seem to whisper

VITALITY.

51

their secret to their comrades that arrive, and thus,
while the Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains the same.
Constancy of form in the grouping of the molecules,
and not constancy of the molecules themselves, is the
correlative of this constancy of perception. Life is a
wave which in no two consecutive moments of its
existence is composed of the same particles.

Supposing, then, the molecules of the human body,
instead of replacing others, and thus renewing a pre-
existing form, to be gathered first hand from nature
and put together in the same relative positions as
those which they occupy in the body. Supposing them
to have the selfsame forces and distribution of forces,
the selfsame motions and distribution of motions —
would this organised concourse of molecules stand
before us as a sentient thinking being ? There seems
no valid reason to believe that it would not. Or, sup-
posing a planet carved from the sun, set spinning round
an axis, and revolving round the sun at a distance from
him equal to that of our earth, would one of the
consequences of its refrigeration be the development of
organic forms ? I lean to the affirmative. Structural
forces are certainly in the mass, whether or not those
forces reach to the extent of forming a plant or an
animal. In an amorphous drop of water lie latent all
the marvels of crystalline force ; and who will set
limits to the possible play of molecules in a cooling
planet ? If these statements startle, it is because
matter has been defined and maligned by philosophers >
and theologians, who were equally unaware that it
is, at bottom, essentially mystical and transcendental.

Questions such as these derive their present interest
in great part from their audacity, which is sure, in due
time, to disappear. And the sooner the public dread is
abolished with reference to such questions the better for

52

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the cause of truth. As regards knowledge, physical
science is polar. In one sense it knows, or is destined
to know, everything. In another sense it knows no-
thing. Science understands much of this intermediate
phase of things that we call nature, of which it is the
product ; but science knows nothing of the origin or
destiny of nature. Who or what made the sun, and
gave his rays their alleged power? Who or what
made and bestowed upon the ultimate particles of
matter their wondrous power of varied interaction?
Science does not know : the mystery, though pushed
back, remains unaltered. To many of us who feel
that there are more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamt of in the present philosophy of science, but
who have been also taught, by baffled efforts, how vain
is the attempt to grapple with the Inscrutable, the
ultimate frame of mind is that of Groethe :

Who dares to name His name,

Or belief in Him proclaim, ■

Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enf older ?

Gleams across the mind His light,

Feels the lifted soul His might,

Dare it then deny His reign, the All-upholder ?

53

As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself : That little
fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing moor, where the
sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost
horse-shoe, — is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole
Universe ; or indissolubly joined to the whole ? Thou fool, that
smithy-fire was primarily kindled at the Sun ; is fed by air that
circulates from before Noah’s Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar ;
therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force
of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force
brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the
great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an uncon-
scious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All .... Detached,
separated ! I say there is no such separation : nothing hitherto
was ever stranded, cast aside ; but all, were it only a withered leaf,
works together with all ; is borne forward on the bottomless,
shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual metamor-
phoses.— Carlyle.

V.

MATTER AND FORCE.1

IT is the custom of the Professors in the Royal School
of -Mines in London to give courses of evening lec-
tures every year to working men. The lecture-room
holds 600 people ; and tickets to this amount are dis-
posed of as quickly as they can be handed to those who
apply for them. So desirous are the working men of
London to attend these lectures, that the persons who
fail to obtain tickets always bear a large proportion to
those who succeed. Indeed, if the lecture-room could
hold 2,000 instead of 600, I do not doubt that every one

' A Lecture delivered to the working men of Dundee Sep-
tember 5, 1867, with additions. ’

54

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of its benches would be occupied on these occasions. It
is, moreover, worthy of remark that the lectures are but
rarely of a character which could help the working man
in his daily pursuits. The information acquired is
hardly ever of a nature which admits of being turned
into money. It is, therefore, a pure desire for know-
ledge, as a thing good in itself, and without regard to
its practical application, which animates the hearers of
these lectures.

It is also my privilege to lecture to another audience
in London, composed in part of the aristocracy of rank,
while the audience just referred to is composed wholly
of the aristocracy of labour. As regards attention and
courtesy to the lecturer, neither of these audiences has
anything to learn of the other ; neither can claim supe-
riority over the other. It would not, perhaps, be quite
correct to take those persons who flock to the School of
Mines as average samples of their class ; they are prob-
ably picked men — the aristocracy of labour-, as I have
just called them. At all events, their conduct demon-
strates that the essential qualities of what we in England
understand by a gentleman are confined to no class ; and
they have often raised in my mind the wish that the
gentlemen of all classes, artisans as well as lords, could, by
some process of selection, be sifted from the general mass
of the community, and caused to know each other better.

When pressed some months ago by the Council of
the British Association to give an evening lecture to
the working men of Dundee, my experience of the
working men of London naturally rose to my mind ;
and, though heavily weighted with other duties, I could
not bring myself to decline the l'equest of the Council.
Hitherto, the evening discourses of the Association have
been delivered before its members and associates alone.
But after the meeting at Nottingham, last year, where

MATTER AND FORCE. 55

the working men, at their own request, were addressed
by our late President, Mr. Grove, and by my excellent
friend, Professor Huxley, the idea arose of incorporating
with all subsequent meetings of the Association an
address to the working men of the town in which the
meeting is held. A resolution to that effect was sent
to the Committee of Eecommendations ; the Committee
supported the resolution ; the Council of the Association
ratified the decision of the Committee; and here I am to
carry out to the best of my ability their united wishes.

Whether it be a consequence of long-continued de-
velopment, or an endowment conferred once for all on
man at his creation, we find him here gifted with a
mind curious to know the causes of things, and sur-
rounded by objects which excite its questionings, and
raise the desire for an explanation. It is related of a
young Prince of one of the Pacific Islands, that when
he first saw himself in a looking-glass, he ran round
the glass to see who was standing at the back. And
thus it is with the general human intellect, as regards
the phenomena of the external world. It wishes to get
behind and learn the causes and connections of these
phenomena. What is the sun, what is the earth, what
should we see if we came to the edge of the earth and
looked over ? What is the meaning of thunder and
lightning, of hail, rain, storm, and snow ? Such ques-
tions presented themselves to early men, and by and by
it was discovered that this desire for knowledge was
not implanted in vain. After many trials it became
evident that man’s capacities were, so to speak, the
complement of nature’s facts, and that, within certain
limits, the secret of the universe was open to the
human understanding. It was found that the mind of
man had the power of penetrating far beyond the

56

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

boundaries of his five senses ; that the things which are
seen in the material world depend for their action upon
things unseen ; in short, that besides the phenomena
which address the senses, there are laws and principles
and processes which do not address the senses at all,
but which must be, and can be, spiritually discerned.

To the subjects which require this discernment be-
long the phenomena of molecular force. But to trace
the genesis of the notions now entertained upon this
subject, we have to go a long way back. In the draw-
ing of a bow, the darting of a javelin, the throwing of a
stone — in the lifting of burdens, and in personal com-
bats, even savage man became acquainted with the
operation of force. Ages of discipline, moreover, taught
him foresight. He laid by at the proper season stores
of food, thus obtaining time to look about him, and to
become an observer and enquirer. Two things which
he noticed must have profoundly stirred his curiosity.
He found that a kind of resin dropped from a certain
tree possessed, when rubbed, the power of drawing
light bodies to itself, and of causing them to cling to
it ; and he also found that a particular stone exerted
a similar power over a particular kind of metal. I
allude, of course, to electrified amber, and to the load-
stone, or natural magnet, and its power to attract
particles of iron. Previous experience of his own
muscles had enabled our early enquirer to distinguish
between a push and a pull. Augmented experience
showed him that in the case of the magnet and the
amber, pulls and pushes — attractions and repulsions
— were also exerted ; and, by a kind of poetic transfer,
he applied to things external to himself, conceptions
derived from himself. The magnet and the rubbed
amber were credited with pushing and pulling, or, in
other words, with exerting force.

MATTER AND FORCE.

57

In the time of the great Lord Bacon the margin of
these pushes and pulls was vastly extended by Dr.
Gilbert, a man probably of firmer scientific fibre, and
of finer insight, than Bacon himself. Gilbert proved
that a multitude of other bodies, when rubbed, exerted
the power which, thousands of years previously, had
been observed in amber. In this way the notion of
attraction and repulsion in external nature was ren-
dered familiar. It was a matter of experience that
bodies, between which no visible link or connection
existed, possessed the power of acting upon each other ;
and the action came to be technically called ‘ action at
a distance.’

But out of experience in science there grows some-
thing finer than mere experience. Experience furnishes
the soil for plants of higher growth ; and this observa-
tion of action at a distance provided material for
speculation upon the largest of problems. Bodies were
observed to fall to the earth. Why should they do so ?
The earth was proved to revolve round the sun ; and
the moon to revolve round the earth. Why should they
do so ? What prevents them from flying straight off
into space ? Supposing it were ascertained that from
a part of the earth’s rocky crust a firmly fixed and
: tightly stretched chain started towards the sun, we
might be inclined to conclude that the earth is held in its
orbit by the chain — that the sun twirls the earth around
him, as a boy twirls round his head a bullet at the end
of a string. But why should the chain be needed ?
It is a fact of experience that bodies can attract each
; other at a distance, without the intervention of any chain.
Why should not the sun and earth so attract each other ?
and why should not the fall of bodies from a height be
the result of their attraction by the earth ? Here then
we reach one of those higher speculations which grow out

58

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of the fruitful soil of observation. Having started with
the savage, and his sensations of muscular force, we
pass on to the observation of force exerted between a
magnet and rubbed amber and the bodies which they
attract, rising, by an unbroken growth of ideas, to a
conception of the force by which sun and planets are
held together.

This idea of attraction between sun and planets had
become familiar in the time of Newton. He set him-
self to examine the attraction ; and here, as elsewhere,
we find the speculative mind falling back for its
materials upon experience. It had been observed, in
the case of magnetic and electric bodies, that the
nearer they were brought together the stronger was the
force exerted between them ; while, by increasing the
distance, the force diminished until it became in-
sensible. Hence the inference that the assumed pull
between the earth and the sun would be influenced by
their distance asunder. Gfuesses had been made as to
the exact manner in which the force varied with the
distance ; but Newton supplemented the guess by the
severe test of experiment and calculation. Comparing
the pull of the earth upon a body close to its surface,
with its pull upon the moon, 240,000 miles away,
Newton rigidly established the law of variation with
the distance. But on his way to this result Newton
found room for other conceptions, some of which,
indeed, constituted the necessary stepping-stones to his
result. The one which here concerns us is, that not only
does the sun attract the earth, and the earth attract the
sun, as wholes , but every particle of the sun attracts
every particle of the earth, and the reverse. His con-
clusion was, that the attraction of the masses was simply
the sum of the attractions of their constituent particles.

This result seems so obvious that you will perhaps

MATTER AND FORCE.

59

wonder at my dwelling’ upon it ; but it really marks a
turning point in our notions of force. 1- ou have
probably heard of certain philosophers ot the ancient
world named Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius.
[ These men adopted, developed, and diffused the doctrine
of atoms and molecules, which found its consummation
at the hands of the illustrious John Dalton. But the
• Greek and Roman philosophers I have named, and their
followers, up to the time of Newton, pictured their atoms
t as falling and flying through space, hitting each other,
and clinging together by imaginary hooks and claws,
j They missed the central idea that atoms and molecules
could come together, not by being fortuitously knocked
against each other, but by their own mutual attrac-
tions. This is one of the great steps taken by Newton.
He familiarised the world with the conception of
v molecular force.

Newton, you know, was preceded by a grand fellow
named John Kepler — a true working man — who, by
analysing the astronomical observations of his master,
Tycho Brahe, had actually found that the planets
moved as they are now known to move. Kepler knew
as much about the motion of the planets as Newton did ;
in fact, Kepler taught Newton and the world generally
the facts of planetary motion. But this was not enough.
The question arose — Why should the facts be so ? This

I was the great question for Newton, and it was the solu-
tion of it which renders his name and fame immortal.
Starting from the principle that every particle of
matter in the solar system attracts every other particle
ay a force which varies as the inverse square of the
distance between the particles, he proved that the
alanetary motions must be what observation makes
f hem to be. He showed that the moon fell towards
he earth, and that the planets fell towards the sun,

GO

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

through the operation of the same force that pulls an
apple from its tree. This all-pervading force, which
forms the solder of the material universe, and the con-
ception of which was necessary to Newton’s intellectual
peace, is called the force of gravitation.

Gravitation is a purely attractive force, hut in elec-
tricity and magnetism, repulsion had been always seen
to accompany attraction. Electricity and magnetism
are double or polar forces. In the case of magnetism,
experience soon pushed the mind beyond the bounds of
experience, compelling it to conclude that the polarity
of the magnet was resident in its molecules. I hold a
magnetised strip of steel by its centre, and find that
one half of the strip attracts, and the other half repels,
the north end of a magnetic needle. I break the strip
in the middle, find that this half, which a moment
ago attracted throughout its entire length the north
pole of a magnetic needle, is now divided into two new
halves, one of which wholly attracts, and the other of
which wholly repels, the north pole of the needle.
The half proves to be as perfect a magnet as the whole.
You may break this half and go on till further breaking
becomes impossible through the very smallness of the
fragments ; the smallest fragment is found endowed with
two poles, and is, therefore, a perfect magnet. But
you cannot stop here : you imagine where you cannot
experiment ; and reach the conclusion entertained by
all scientific men, that the magnet which you see and
feel is an assemblage of molecular magnets which you
cannot see and feel, but which, as before stated, must
be intellectually discerned.

Magnetism then is a polar force ; and experience
hints that a force of this kind may exert a certain struc-
tural power. It is known, for example, that iron filings
strewn round a magnet arrange themselves in definite

MATTER AND FORCE.

61

lines, called, by some, 4 magnetic curves,’ and, by
others, ‘ lines of magnetic force.’ Over two magnets
now before me is spread a sheet of paper. Scattering
iron filings over the paper, polar force comes into play,
and every particle of the iron responds to that force.
We have a kind of architectural effort— if I may use
the term — exerted on the part of the iron filings. Here
then is a fact of experience which, as you will see
immediately, furnishes further material for the mind to
operate upon, rendering it possible to attain intellectual
clearness and repose, while speculating upon apparently
remote phenomena.

The magnetic force has here acted upon particles
visible to the eye. But, as already stated, there are
numerous processes in nature which entirely elude the
eye of the body, and must be figured by the eye of the
mind. The processes of chemistry are examples of these.
Long thinking and experimenting has led philosophers
to conclude that matter is composed of atoms from
which, whether separate or in combination, the whole
material world is built up. The air we breathe, for ex-
ample, is mainly a mechanical mixture of the atoms
of oxygen and nitrogen. The water we drink is also
composed of oxygen and hydrogen. But it differs
from the air in this particular, that in water the
oxygen and hydrogen are not mechanically mixed,
; but chemically combined. The atoms of oxygen and
those of hydrogen exert enormous attractions on each
i other, so that when brought into sufficient proximity
they rush together with an almost incredible force to
form a chemical compound. But powerful as is the
force with which these atoms lock themselves together,
we have the means of tearing them asunder, and the
agent by which we accomplish this may here receive a
few moments’ attention.

62

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Into a vessel containing acidulated water I dip
two strips of metal, the one being zinc and the other
platinum, not permitting them to touch each other
in the liquid. I connect the two upper ends of the
strips by a piece of copper wire. The wire is now the
channel of what, for want of a better name, we call an
‘ electric current.’ What the inner change of the wire
is we do not know, but we do know that a change has
occurred, by the external effects produced by the wire.
Let me show you one or two of these effects. Before
you is a series of ten vessels, each with its pair of metals,
and I wish to get the added force of all ten. The ar-
rangement is called a voltaic battery. I plunge a piece
of copper wire among these iron filings ; they refuse to
cling to it. I employ the selfsame wire to connect the
two ends of the battery, and subject it to the same test.
The iron filings now crowd round the wire and cling to
it. I interrupt the current, and the filings immediately
fall ; the power of attraction continues only so long
as the wire connects the two ends of the battery.

Here is a piece of similar wire, overspun with
cotton, to prevent the contact of its various parts, and
formed into a coil. I make the coil part of the wire
which connects the two ends of the voltaic battery. By
the attractive force with which it has become suddenly
endowed, it now empties this tool-box of its iron nails.
I twist a covered copper wire round this common poker ;
connecting the wire with the two ends of the voltaic
battery, the poker is instantly transformed into a strong
magnet. Two flat spirals are here suspended facing
each other, about six inches apart. Sending a current
through both spirals, they clash suddenly together ; re-
versing what is called the direction of the current in
one of the spirals, they fly asunder. All these effects
are due to the power which we name an electric current,

MATTER AND FORCE.

63

and which we figure as flowing through the wire when

the voltaic circuit is complete.

By the same agent we tear asunder the locked atoms
of a chemical compound. Into this small cell, contain-
ing water, dip two thin wires. A magnified image of
the cell is thrown upon the screen before you, and you
see plainly the images of the wires. From a small bat-
tery I send an electric current from wire to wire.
Bubbles of gas rise immediately from each of them,
and these are the two gases of which the water is com-
posed. The oxygen is always liberated on the one
wire, the hydrogen on the other. The gases may be
collected either separately or mixed. I place upon my
hand a soap bubble filled with the mixture of both gases.
Applying a taper to the bubble, a loud explosion is
heard. The atoms have rushed together with detonation,
and without injury to my hand, and the water from
which they were extracted is the result of their re-union.

One consequence of the rushing together of the
atoms is the development of heat. What is this heat ?
Here are two ivory balls suspended from the same
point of support by two short strings. I draw them
thus apart and then liberate them. They clash
together, but, by virtue of their elasticity, they
quickly recoil, and a sharp vibratory rattle succeeds
their collision. This experiment will enable you to
figure to your mind a pair of clashing atoms. We
have in the first place, a motion of the one atom to-
wards the other — a motion of translation, as it is usu-
ally called — then a recoil, and afterwards a motion of
vibration. To this vibratory motion we give the name
of heat. Thus, three things are to be kept before the
mind — first, the atoms themselves ; secondly, the force
with which they attract each other ; and thirdly, the

64

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

motion consequent upon the exertion of that force. This
motion must be figured first as a motion of translation,
and then as a motion of vibration, to which latter we
give the name of heat. For some time after the act of
combination this motion is so violent as to prevent the
molecules from coming together, the water being main-
tained in a state of vapour. But as the vapour cools,
or in other words loses its motion, the molecules coalesce
to form a liquid.

And now we approach a new and wonderful display
of force. As long as the substance remains in a liquid
or vaporous condition, the play of this force is altogether
masked and hidden. But as the heat is gradually
withdrawn, the molecules prepare for new arrangements
and combinations. Solid crystals of water are at length
formed, to which we give the familiar name of ice. Look-
ing at these beautiful edifices and their internal struc-
ture, the pondering mind has forced upon it the question,
How are they built up ? We have obtained clear con-
ceptions of polar force ; and we infer from our broken
magnet that polar force may be resident in the molecules
or smallest particles of matter, and that by the play of
this force structural arrangement is possible. What, in
relation to our present question, is the natural action of a
mind furnished with this knowledge ? It is compelled to
transcend experience, and endow the atoms and mole-
cules of which crystals are built with definite poles whence
issue attractions and repulsions. In virtue of these forces
some poles are drawn together, while some retreat from
each other ; atom is added to atom, and molecule to mole-
cule, not boisterously or fortuitously, but silently and
symmetrically, and in accordance with laws more rigid
than those which guide a human builder when he places
his materials together. Imagine the bricks and stones
of this town of Dundee endowed with structural power.

MATTER AND FORCE.

65

Imagine them attracting and repelling, and arranging
themselves into streets and houses and Kinnaird Halls —
would not that be wonderful ? Hardly less wonderful
is the play of force by which the molecules of water
build themselves into the sheets of ice which every
winter roof your ponds and lakes.

If I could show you the actual progress of this mole-
cular architecture, its beauty would delight and astonish
you. A reversal of the process of crystallisation may be
actually shown. The molecules of a piece of ice may be
taken asunder before your eyes ; and from the manner
in which they separate, you may to some extent infer the
manner in which they go together. When a beam is
sent from our electric lamp through a plate of glass, a
portion of the beam is intercepted, and the glass is
warmed by the portion thus retained within it. When
the beam is sent through a plate of ice, a portion of the
beam is also absorbed ; but instead of warming the ice, the
intercepted heat melts it internally. It is to the delicate
silent action of this beam within the ice that I now wish
to direct your attention. Upon the screen is thrown a
magnified image of the slab of ice : the light of the beam
passes freely through the ice without melting it, and
enables us to form the image ; but the heat is in great
part intercepted, and that heat now applies itself to
the work of internal liquefaction. Selecting certain
points for attack, round about those points the beam
works silently, undoing the crystalline architecture,
and reducing to the freedom of liquidity molecules
which had been previously locked in a solid embrace.
The liquefied spaces are rendered visible by strong il-
r: lumination. Observe those six-petaled flowers breaking
out over the white surface, and expanding in size as
the action of the beam continues. These flowers are
liquefied ice. Under the action of the heat the

VOL. II. f

66

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

molecules of the crystals fall asunder, so as to leave
behind them these exquisite forms. We have here a
process of demolition which clearly reveals the reverse
process of construction. In this fashion, and in strict
accordance with this hexangular type, every ice molecule
takes its place upon our ponds and lakes during the
frosts of winter. To use the language of an American
poet, 4 the atoms march in tune,’ moving to the music
of law, which thus renders the commonest substance in
nature a miracle of beauty.

It is the function of science, not as some think to
divest this universe of its wonder and mystery, but, as
in the case before us, to point out the wonder and the
mystery of common things. Those fern-like forms,
which on a frosty morning overspread your window-
panes, illustrate the action of the same force. Breathe
upon such a pane before the fires are lighted, and reduce
the solid crystalline film to the liquid condition; then
watch its subsequent resolidification. You will see it all
the better if you look at it through a common magni-
fying glass. After you have ceased breathing, the film,
abandoned to the action of its own forces, appears for a
moment to be alive. Lines of motion run through it ;
molecule closes with molecule, until finally the whole
film passes from the state of liquidity, through this
state of motion, to its final crystalline repose.

I can show you something similar. Over a piece
of perfectly clean glass I pour a little water in which
certain crystals have been dissolved. A film of the solu-
tion clings to the glass. By means of a microscope and a
lamp, an image of the plate of glass is thrown upon the
screen. The beam of the lamp, besides illuminating
the glass, also heats it ; evaporation sets in, and at a
certain moment, when the solution has become super-
saturated, splendid branches of crystal shoot out over the

MATTER AND FORCE.

67

screen. A dozen square feet of surface are now covered
bv those beautiful forms. With another solution we
obtain crystalline spears, feathered right and left by
other spears. From distant nuclei in the middle of the
field of view the spears shoot with magical rapidity in
all directions. The film of water on a window-pane on
a frosty morning exhibits effects quite as wonderful as
these. Latent in these formless solutions, latent in eveiy
drop of water, lies this marvellous structural power,
which only requires the withdrawal of opposing forces
to bring it into action.

The clear liquid now held up before you is a solution
of nitrate of silver — a compound of silver and nitric acid.
When an electric current is sent through this liquid the
silver is severed from the acid, as the hydrogen was separ-
ated from the oxygen in a former experiment ; and I would
ask you to observe how the metal behaves when its mole-
cules are thus successively set free. The image of the cell,
and of the two wires which dip into the liquid of the cell,
are now clearly shown upon the screen. Let us close the
circuit, and send the current through the liquid. From
one of the wires a beautiful silver tree commences im-
mediately to sprout. Branches of the metal are thrown
out, and umbrageous foliage loads the branches. You
have here a growth, apparently as wonderful as that of
any vegetable, perfected in a minute before your eyes.
Substituting for the nitrate of silver acetate of lead,
which is a compound of lead and acetic acid, the electric
current severs the lead from the acid, and you see the
metal slowly branching into exquisite metallic ferns, the
fronds of which, as they become too heavy, break from
their roots and fall to the bottom of the cell.

These experiments show that the common matter of
t our earth — ‘ brute matter,’ as Dr. Young, in his Night
Thoughts , is pleased to call it — when its atoms and mole-

68

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

cules are permitted to bring their forces into free play,
arranges itself, under the operation of these forces, into
forms which rival in beauty those of the vegetable world.
And what is the vegetable world itself, but the result of
the complex play of these molecular forces ? Here, as
elsewhere throughout nature, if matter moves it is force
that moves it, and if a certain structure, vegetable or
mineral, is produced, it is through the operation of the
forces exerted between the atoms and molecules.

The solid matter of which our lead and silver trees
were formed was, in the first instance, disguised in a
transparent liquid ; the solid matter of which our woods
and forests are composed is also, for the most part dis-
guised in a transparent gas, which is mixed in small
quantities with the air of our atmosphere. This gas is
formed by the union of carbon and oxygen, and is called
carbonic acid gas. The carbonic acid of the air being
subjected to an action somewhat analogous to that of
the electric current in the case of our lead and silver
solutions, has its carbon liberated and deposited as woody
fibre. The watery vapour of the air is subjected to
similar action ; its hydrogen is liberated from its oxygen,
and lies down side by side with the carbon in the tissues
of the tree. The oxygen in both cases is permitted to
wander away into the atmosphere. But what is it in
nature that plays the part of the electric current in our
experiments, tearing asunder the locked atoms of carbon,
oxygen, and hydrogen ? The rays of the sun. The
leaves of plants which absorb both the carbonic acid and
the aqueous vapour of the air, answer to the cells in
which our decompositions took place. And just as
the molecular attractions of the silver and the lead
found expression in those beautiful branching forms
seen in our experiments, so do the molecular attractions
of the liberated carbon and hydrogen find expression iu
the architecture of grasses, plants, and trees.

MATTER AND FORCE.

69

In the fall of a cataract and the rush of the wind we
have examples of mechanical power. In the combina-
tions of chemistry and in the formation of crystals and
vegetables we have examples of molecular power. T ou
have learned how the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen rush
together to form water. I have not thought it necessary
to dwell upon the mighty mechanical energy of their act
of combination ; but it may be said, in passing, that the
clashing together of 1 lb. of hydrogen and 8 lbs. of oxygen
to form 9 lbs. of aqueous vapour, is greater than the
shock of a weight of 1,000 tons falling from a height of
20 feet against the earth. Now, in order that the atoms
of oxygen and hydrogen should rise by their mutual
attractions to the velocity corresponding to this enor-
mous mechanical effect, a certain distance must exist
between the particles. It is in rushing over this that
the velocity is attained.

This idea of distance between the attracting atoms
is of the highest importance in our conception of the
: system of the world. For the matter of the world may
be classified under two distinct heads : atoms and mole-
cules which have already combined and thus satisfied
S their mutual attractions, and atoms and molecules which
i have not yet combined, and whose mutual attractions are,
; therefore, unsatisfied. Now, as regards motive power,
we are entirely dependent on atoms and molecules of the
latter kind. Their attractions can produce motion, be-
r cause sufficient distance intervenes between the attract-
ing atoms, and it is this atomic motion that we utilise in
our machines. Thus we can get power out of oxygen and
hydrogen by the act of their union ; but once they are
combined, and once the vibratory motion consequent on
their combination has been expended, no further poAver
lean he got out of their mutual attraction. As dynamic
i agents they are dead. The materials of the earth’s

70

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

crust consist for the most part of substances whose atoms
have already closed in chemical union — whose mutual
attractions are satisfied. Granite, for instance, is a
widely diffused substance ; but granite consists, in great
part, of silicon, oxygen, potassium, calcium, and alu-
minum, whose atoms united long ago, and are there-
fore dead. Limestone is composed of carbon, oxygen,
and a metal called calcium, the atoms of which have
already closed in chemical union, and are therefore
finally at rest. In this way we might go over nearly the
whole of the materials of the earth’s crust, and satisfy
ourselves that though they were sources of power in ages
past, and long before any creature appeared on the earth
capable of turning their power to account, they are
sources of power no longer. And here we might halt for
a moment to remark on that tendency, so prevalent in
the world, to regard everything as made for human use.
Those who entertain this notion, hold, I think, an over-
weening opinion of their own importance in the system
of nature. Flowers bloomed before men saw them, and
the quantity of power wasted before man could utilise
it is all but infinite compared with what now remains.
We are truly heirs of all the ages ; but as honest men
it behoves us to learn the extent of our inheritance,
and as brave ones not to whimper if it should prove
less than we had supposed. The healthy attitude of
mind with reference to this subject is that of the poet,
who, when asked whence came the rhodora, joyfully
acknowledged his brotherhood with the flower —

Why thou wert there, 0 rival of the rose I
I never thought to ask, I never knew,

But in my simple ignorance supposed

The self-same power that brought me there brought you.1

A few exceptions to the general state of union of
1 Emerson.

MATTER AND FORCE.

71

the molecules of the earth’s crust — vast in relation to
us, but trivial in comparison to the total store of which
they are the residue— still remain. They constitute
our main sources of motive power. By far the most
important of these are our beds of coal. Distance still
intervenes between the atoms of carbon and those of
atmospheric oxygen, across which the atoms may be
urged by their mutual attractions ; and we can utilise
the motion thus produced. Once the carbon and the
oxygen have rushed together, so as to form carbonic
acid, their mutual attractions are satisfied ; and, while
they continue in this condition, as dynamic agents they
are dead. Our woods and forests are also sources of
mechanical energy, because they have the power of
uniting with the atmospheric oxygen. Passing from
plants to animals, we find that the source of motive
power just referred to is also the source of muscular
power. A horse can perform work, and so can a man ;
but this work is at bottom the molecular work of the
transmuted food and the oxygen of the air. W e inhale
this vital gas, and bring it into sufficiently close
proximity with the carbon and the hydrogen of the
body. These unite in obedience to their mutual at-
: tractions ; and their motion towards each other, pro-
perly turned to account by the wonderful mechanism
of the body, becomes muscular motion.

One fundamental thought pervades all these state-
ments : there is one tap root from which they all spring.
This is the ancient maxim that out of nothing nothing
i comes; that neither in the organic world nor in the
inorganic is power produced without the expenditure of
power ; that neither in the plant nor in the animal
jj is there a creation of force or motion. Trees grow,
and so do men and horses ; and here we have new
power incessantly introduced upon the earth. But its

72

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

source, as I have already stated, is the sun. It is the
sun that separates the carbon from the oxygen of the
carbonic acid, and thus enables them to recombine.
Whether they recombine in the furnace of the steam-
engine or in the animal body, the origin of the power
they produce is the same. In this sense we are all ‘souls
of fire and children of the sun.’ But, as remarked by
Helmholtz, we must be content to share our celestial
pedigree with the meanest of living things.

Some estimable persons, here present, very possibly
shrink from accepting these statements ; they may be
frightened by their apparent tendency towards-what is
called materialism — a word which, to many minds, ex-
presses something very dreadful. But it ought to be
known and avowed that the physical philosopher, as
such, must be a pure materialist. His enquiries deal
with matter and force, and with them alone. And
whatever be the forms which matter and force assume,
whether in the organic world or the inorganic, whether
in the coal-beds and forests of the earth, or in the brains
and muscles of men, the physical philosopher will make
good his right to investigate them. It is perfectly vain
to attempt to stop enquiry in this direction. Depend
upon it, if a chemist by bringing the proper materials
together, in a retort or crucible, could make a baby, he
would do it. There is no law, moral or physical, for-
bidding him to do it. At the present moment there
are, no doubt, persons experimenting on the possibility
of producing what we call life out of inorganic materials.
Let them pursue their studies in peace ; it is only by
such trials that they will learn the limits of their
own powers and the operation of the laws of matter and
force.

But while thus making the largest demand for free-
dom of investigation — while I consider science to be

MATTER AND FORCE.

73

alike powerful as an instrument of intellectual culture
and as a ministrant to the material wants of men ; if
you ask me whether it has solved, or is likely in our
day to solve, the problem of this universe, I must shake
my head in doubt. You remember the first Napoleon’s
question, when the savcins who accompanied him to
Egypt discussed in his presence the origin of the
universe, and solved it to their own apparent satis-
faction. He looked aloft to the starry heavens, and
said. ‘ It is all very well, gentlemen ; but who made
these?’ That question still remains unanswered, and
science makes no attempt to answer it. As far as I can
see, there is no quality in the human intellect which is
fit to be applied to the solution of the problem. It
entirely transcends us. The mind of man may be com-
pared to a musical instrument with a certain range of
notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infi-
nitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force
lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they
reach we will at all hazards push our enquiries. But
behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of
this universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are con-
cerned, is incapable of solution. Fashion this mystery
as you will, with that I have nothing to do. But let
your conception of it not be an unworthy one. Invest
that conception with your highest and holiest thought,
but be careful of pretending to know more about it
than is given to man to know. Be carefid, above all
things, of professing to see in the phenomena of the
material world the evidences of Divine pleasure or dis-
pleasure. Doubt those who would deduce from the fall
of the tower of Siloam the anger of the Lord against
those who were crushed. Doubt equally those who pre-
tend to see in cholera, cattle-plague, and bad harvests,
evidences of Divine anger. Doubt those spiritual guides

l

74

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

who in Scotland have lately propounded the monstrous
theory that the depreciation of railway scrip is a conse-
quence of railway travelling on Sundays. Let them
not, as far as you are concerned, libel the system of
nature with their ignorant hypotheses. Looking from
the solitudes of thought into this highest of questions,
and seeing the puerile attempts often made to solve it,
well might the mightiest of living Scotchmen — that
strong and earnest soul, who has made every soul of
like nature in these islands his debtor — well, I say,
might your noble old Carlyle scornfully retort on such
interpreters of the ways of God to men : —

The Builder of this universe was wise,

He formed all souls, all systems, planets, particles ;

The plan he formed his worlds and iEons by,

Was — Heavens ! — was thy small nine-and-thirty articles !

75

Here, indeed, we arrive at the barrier which needs to be per-
petually pointed out; alike to those who seek materialistic explana-
tions of mental phenomena, and to those who are alarmed lest such
explanations may be found. The last class prove by their fear,
almost as much as the first prove by their hope, that they believe
Mind may possibly be interpreted in terms of Matter ; whereas
many whom they vituperate as materialists are profoundly convinced
that there is not the remotest possibility of so interpreting them.
—Herbert Spencer.

VI.

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM}

1868.

THE celebrated Ficbte, in his lectures on the 4 Voca-
tion of the Scholar,’ insisted on a culture which
should be not one-sided, hut all-sided. The scholar’s
intellect was to expand spherically, and not in a single
direction only. In one direction, however, Fichte re-
quired that the scholar should apply himself directly to
nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,
by original labours of his own, the immense debt he
owed to the labours of others. It was these which
enabled him to supplement the knowledge derived from
his own researches, so as to render his culture rounded
and not one-sided.

As regards science, Fichte’s idea is to some extent
illustrated by the constitution and labours of the British

1 President’s Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section
of the British Association at Norwich.

70

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Association. We have here a body of men engaged
in the pursuit of Natural Knowledge, but variously
engaged. While sympathising with each of its depart-
ments, and supplementing his culture by knowledge
drawn from all of them, each student amongst us selects
one subject for the exercise of his own original faculty
— one line, along which he may carry the light of his
private intelligence a little way into the darkness by
which all knowledge is surrounded. Thus, the geologist
deals with the rocks ; the biologist with the conditions
and phenomena of life ; the astronomer with stellar
masses and motions ; the mathematician with the rela-
tions of space and number ; the chemist pursues his
atoms ; while the physical investigator has his own
large field in optical, thermal, electrical, acoustical, and
other phenomena. The British Association then, as a
whole, faces physical nature on all sides, and pushes
knowledge centrifugally outwards, the sum of its labours
constituting what Fichte might call the sphere of
natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association
it is found necessary to resolve this sphere into its
component parts, which take concrete form under the
respective letters of our Sections.

Mathematics and Physics have been long accus-
tomed to coalesce, and here they form a single section.
No matter how subtle a natural phenomenon may be,
whether we observe it in the region of sense, or follow
it into that of imagination, it is in the long run
reducible to mechanical laws. But the mechanical
data once guessed or given, mathematics are all-power-
ful as an instrument of deduction. The command
of Geometry over the relations of space, and the far-
reaching power which Analysis confers, are potent both
as means of physical discovery, and of reaping the entire
fruits of disco vezy. Indeed, without mathematics, ex-

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

77

pressed or implied, our knowledge of physical science
would be both friable and incomplete.

Side by side with the mathematical method we have
the method of experiment. Here from a starting-point
furnished by his own researches or those of others, the
investigator proceeds by combining intuition and veri-
fication. He ponders the knowledge he possesses, and
tries to push it further; he guesses, and checks his
guess ; he conjectures, and confirms or explodes his
conjecture. These guesses and conjectures are by no
means leaps in the dark ; for knowledge once gained
casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.
There is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate
something beyond itself. The force of intellectual
penetration into this penumbral region which surrounds
actual knowledge is not, as some seem to think, depen-
dent upon method, but upon the genius of the investi-
gator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to
need control and verification. The profoundest minds
know best that Nature’s ways are not at all times their
ways, and that the brightest flashes in the world of
thought are incomplete until they have been proved to
have their counterparts in the world of fact. Thus the
vocation of the true experimentalist may be defined as
the continued exercise of spiritual insight, and its inces-
sant correction and realisation. His experiments con-
stitute a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it
were, the soul.

Partly through mathematical and partly through
experimental research, physical science has, of late years,
assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in
a material and in an intellectual point of view it has
produced, and it is destined to produce, immense
changes — vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations
in the popular conception of the origin, rule, and govern-

78

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ance of natural things. By science, in the physical
world, miracles are wrought, while philosophy is for-
saking its ancient metaphysical channels, and pursuing
others which have been opened, or indicated by, scien-
tific research. This must become more and more the
case as philosophical writers become more deeply
imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted
with the facts which scientific men have established,
and with the great theories which they have elabo-
rated .

If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour
and minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand,
moving over the graduated dial. Why do these hands
move ? and why are their relative motions such as they
are observed to be ? These questions cannot be an-
swered without opening the watch, mastering its various
parts, and ascertaining their relationship to each other.
When this is done, we find that the observed motion of
the hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism
of the watch when acted upon by the force invested in
the spring. The motion of the hands may be called a
phenomenon of art, but the case is similar with the
phenomena of nature. These also have their inner me-
chanism and their store of force to set that mechanism
going. The ultimate problem of physical science is to
reveal this mechanism, to discern this store, and to show
that from the combined action of both, the phenomena
of which they constitute the basis, must, of necessity,
flow.

I thought an attempt to give you even a brief and
sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific
thinkers regard this problem, would not be uninterest-
ing to you on the present occasion ; more especially
as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on the
tendencies and limits of modern science ; to point out

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

79

the region which men of science claim as their own,
and where it is futile to oppose their advance ; and
also to define, if possible, the bourne between this
and that other region, to which the questionings and
yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed in
vain.

But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the
American Emerson, I think, who said that it is hardly
possible to state any truth strongly, without apparent
injustice to some other truth. Truth is often of a dual
character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles ;
and many of the differences which agitate the thinking
part of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness
with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one half of
the duality, in forgetfulness of the other. The proper
course appears to be to state both halves strongly,
and allow each its fair share in the formation of the
resultant conviction. But this waiting for the state-
ment of the two sides of a question implies patience. It
implies a resolution to suppress indignation, if the state-
ment of the one half should clash with our convictions ;
and to repress equally undue elation, if the half-
statement should happen to chime in with our views. It
implies a determination to wait calmly for the statement
of the whole, before we pronounce judgment in the form
of either acquiescence or dissent.

This premised, and I trust accepted, let us enter
upon our task. There have been writers who affirmed
that the Pyramids of Egypt were natural productions ;
and in his early youth Alexander von Humboldt wrote
a learned essay with the express object of refuting this
notion. We now regard the pyramids as the work of
men’s hands, aided probably by machinery of which no
record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming
workers toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert

80

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

stones, and, guided by the volition, the skill, and
possibly at times by the whip of the architect, placing
them in their proper positions. The blocks, in this
case, were moved and posited by a power external to
themselves, and the final form of the pyramid expressed
the thought of its human builder.

Let ns pass from this illustration of constructive
power to another of a different kind. When a solution
of common salt is slowly evaporated, the water which
holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself
remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration
the salt can no longer retain the liquid form ; its
particles, or molecules, as they are called, begin to
deposit themselves as minute solids — so minute, indeed,
as to defy all microscopic power. As evaporation con-
tinues, solidification goes on, and we finally obtain,
through the clustering together of innumerable mole-
cules, a finite crystalline mass of a definite form.
What is this form ? It sometimes seems a mimicry
of the architecture of Egypt. We have little pyramids
built by the salt, terrace above terrace from base to
apex, forming a series of steps resembling those up
which the traveller in Egypt is dragged by his guides.
The human mind is as little disposed to look without
questioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals, as to look
at the pyramids of Egypt, without enquiring whence
they came. How, then, are those salt-pyramids built
up ?

Guided by analogy, you may, if you like, suppose
that, swarming among the constituent molecules of the
salt, there is an invisible population, controlled and
coerced by some invisible master, placing the atomic
blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the
scientific idea, nor do I think your good sense will
accept it as a likely one. The scientific idea is, that

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

81

the molecules act upon each other without the inter-
vention of slave labour ; that they attract each other,
and repel each other, at certain definite points, or poles,
and in certain definite directions ; and that the pyra-
midal form is the result of this play of attraction and
repulsion. While, then, the blocks of Egypt were
laid down by a power external to themselves, these
molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed
in their places by the inherent forces with which they
act upon each other.

I take common salt as an illustration, because it is
so familiar to us all ; but any other crystalline sub-
stance would answer my purpose equally well. Every-
where, in fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have
this formative power, as Fichte would call it — this
structural energy ready to come into play, and build
the ultimate particles of matter into definite shapes.
The ice of our winters, and of our polar regions, is its
handiwork, and so also are the quartz, felspar, and
mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are for the most
part composed of minute shells, which are also the pro-
duct of structural energy ; but behind the shell, as a
whole, lies a more remote and subtle formative act.
These shells are built up of little crystals of calc-spar,
and, to form these crystals, the structural force had to
deal with the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime.
This tendency on the part of matter to organise itself,
to grow into shape, to assume definite forms in
obedience to the definite action of force, is, as I have
said, all-pervading. It is in the ground on which you
tread, in the water you drink, in the air you breathe.
Incipient life, as it were, manifests itself throughout the
'■ whole of what we call inorganic nature.

The forms of the minerals resulting from this play
of polar forces are various, and exhibit different degrees

VOL. II. G

82

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of complexity. Men of science avail themselves of all
possible means of exploring their molecular architecture.
For this purpose they employ in turn, as agents of
exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and
sound. Polarised light is especially useful and powerful
here. A beam of such light, when sent in among the
molecules of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from this
action we infer with more or less clearness the manner in
which the molecules are arranged. That differences,
for example, exist between the inner structure of rock-
salt and that of crystallised sugar or sugar-candy, is
thus strikingly revealed. These actions often display
themselves in chromatic phenomena of great splendour,
the play of molecular force being so regulated as to
cause the removal of some of the coloured constituents
of white light, while others are left with increased in-
tensity behind.

And now let us pass from what we are accustomed
to regard as a dead mineral, to a living grain of corn.
When this is examined by polarised light, chromatic
phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are
observed. And why ? Because the architecture of the
grain resembles that of the crystal. In the grain also
the molecules are set in definite positions, and in
accordance with their arrangement they act upon the
light. But what has built together the molecules of the
corn ? Regarding crystalline architecture, I have already
said that you may, if you please, consider the atoms and
molecules to be placed in position by a Power external
to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now.
But if in the case of crystals you have rejected this
notion of an external architect, I think you are bound
to reject it in the case of the grain, and to conclude
that the molecules of the corn, also, are posited by the
forces with which they act upon each other. It would

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

83

be poor philosophy to invoke an external agent in the
one case, and to reject it in the other.

Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and
subjecting it to the action of polarised light, let us
place it in the earth, and subject it to a certain degree
of warmth. In other words, let the molecules, both of

the corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in that
state of agitation which we call heat. Under these
circumstances, the grain and the substances which
surround it interact, and a definite molecular architec-
ture is the result. A bud is formed ; this bud reaches
the surface, where it is exposed to the sun’s rays, which
are also to be regarded as a kind of vibratory motion.
And as the motion of common heat, with which the
grain and the substances surrounding it were first
endowed, enabled the grain and these substances to
exercise their mutual attractions and repulsions, and
thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion
of the sim’s rays now enables the green bud to feed
upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous vapour of the
air. The bad appropriates those constituents of both
for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the
other constituent to return to the atmosphere. Thus
the architecture is carried on. Forces are active at the
root, forces are active in the blade, the matter of the
air and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn upon,
and the plant augments in size. We have in succession
the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear ; the cycle of
molecular action being completed by the production of
grains, similar to that with which the process began.

Now there is nothing in this process which neces-
sarily eludes the conceptive or imagining power of the
human mind. An intellect the same in kind as our
own would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to

84

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

would see every molecule placed in its position by the
specific attractions and repulsions exerted between it
and other molecules, the whole process, and its con-
summation, being an instance of the play of molecular
force. Given the grain and its environment, with
their respective forces, the purely human intellect
might, if sufficiently expanded, trace out a 'priori
every step of the process of growth, and, by the appli-
cation of purely mechanical principles, demonstrate
that the cycle must end, as it is seen to end, in the
reproduction of forms like that with which it began.
A necessity rules here, similar to that which rules the
planets in their circuits round the sun.

You will notice that I am stating the truth strongly,
as at the beginning we agreed it should be stated.
But I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye
of science the animal body is just as much the product
of molecular force as the chalk and the ear of corn, or
as the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of the parts of
the body are obviously mechanical. Take the human
heart, for example, with its system of valves, or take
the exquisite mechanism of the eye or hand. Animal
heat, moreover, is the same in kind as the heat of a
fire, being produced by the same chemical process.
Animal motion, too, is as certainly derived from the
food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck’s
walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As re-
gards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as
regards force, it creates nothing. Which of you by
taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ? All
that has been said, then, regarding the plant, may be
restated with regard to the animal. Every particle
that enters into the composition of a nerve, a muscle,
or a bone, has been placed in its position by molecular
force. And unless the existence of law in these matters

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

85

be denied, and the element of caprice introduced, we
must conclude that, given the relation of any molecule
of the body to its environment, its position in the body
might be determined mathematically. Our difficulty
is not with the quality of the problem, but with its
complexity ; and this difficulty might be met by the
simple expansion of the faculties we now possess.
Given this expansion, with the necessary molecular
data, and the chick might be deduced as rigorously and
as logically from the egg, as the existence of Neptune
from the disturbances of Uranus, or as conical refraction
from the undulatory theory of light.

You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing
nakedly what many scientific thinkers more or less dis-
tinctly believe. The formation of a crystal, a plant, or
an animal, is, in their eyes, a purely mechanical pro-
blem, which differs from the problems of ordinary
mechanics, in the smallness of the masses, and the
complexity of the processes involved. Here you have
one half of our dual truth ; let us now glance at the
other half. Associated with this wonderful mechanism
of the animal body we have phenomena no less cer-
tain than those of physics, but between which and the
mechanism we discern no necessary connection. A
man, for example, can say ‘ I feel,’ ‘ I think,’ 4 1 love ; ’
but how does consciousness infuse itself into the pro-
blem ? The human brain is said to be the organ of
thought and feeling : when we are hurt, the brain feels
it ; when we ponder, or when our passions or affections
are excited, it is through the instrumentality of the
brain. Let us endeavour to be a little more precise
here. I hardly imagine there exists a profound scien-
tific thinker, who has reflected upon the subject,
unwilling to admit the extreme probability of the hypo-
thesis, that for every fact of consciousness, whether in

86

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the domain of sense, thought, or emotion, a definite
molecular condition, of motion or structure, is set up
in the brain ; or who woidd be disposed even to deny
that if the motion, or structure, be induced by internal
causes instead of external, the effect on consciousness
will be the same? Let any nerve, for example, be
thrown by morbid action into the precise state of
motion which would be communicated to it by the
pulses of a heated body, surely that nerve will declare
itself hot — the mind will accept the subjective intima-
tion exactly as if it were objective. The retina may be
excited by purely mechanical means. A blow on the
eye causes a luminous flash, and the mere pressure of
the finger on the external ball produces a star of light,
which Newton compared to the circles on a peacock's
tail. Disease makes people see visions and dream
dreams ; but, in all such cases, could we examine the
organs implicated, we should, on philosophical grounds,
expect to find them in that precise molecular condition
which the real objects, if present, would superinduce.

The relation of physics to consciousness being thus
invariable, it follows that, given the state of the brain,
the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred :
or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding state
of the brain might be inferred. But how inferred ?
It would be at bottom not a case of logical inference at
all, but of empirical association. You may reply, that
many of the inferences of science are of this character
— the inference, for example, that an electric current,
of a given direction, will deflect a magnetic needle in a
definite way. But the cases differ in this, that the
passage from the current to the needle, if not demon-
strable, is conceivable, and that we entertain no doubt
as to the final mechanical solution of the problem.
But the passage from the physics of the brain to the

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM

87

corresponding facts of consciousness is inconceivable as
a result of mechanics. Granted that a definite thought,
and a definite molecular action in the brain, occur
simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual
organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which
would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from
the one to the other. They appear together, but we
do not know why. Were our minds and senses so
expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable
us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ;
were we capable of following all their motions, all their
groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there
be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corre-
sponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as
far as ever from the solution of the problem, 4 How are
these physical processes connected with the facts of
consciousness ? ’ The chasm between the two classes of
phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.
Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated
with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of
the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-
handed spiral motion. We should then know, when
we love, that the motion is in one direction, and, when
we hate, that the motion is in the other ; but the
4 why ? ’ would remain as unanswerable as before.

In affirming that the growth of the body is
mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has
its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the
position of the 4 Materialist ’ is stated, as far as that
position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will
be able finally to maintain this position against all
attacks ; but I do not think, in the present condition
of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this
position. I do not think he is entitled to say that his
molecular groupings, and motions, explain everything.

88

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

In reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can
affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of
whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance.
The problem of the connection of body and soul is
as insoluble, in its modern form, as it was in the pre-
scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the
composition of the human brain, and a trenchant
German writer has exclaimed, ‘ Ohne Phosphor, kein
Gedanke ! ’ That may or may not be the case ; but
even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would
not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone
here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless.
If you ask him whence is this ‘ Matter ’ of which we
have been discoursing — who or what divided it into
molecules, who or what impressed upon them this
necessity of running into organic forms — he has no
answer. Science is mute in reply to these questions.
But if the materialist is confounded and science
rendered dumb, who else is prepared with a solution ?
To whom has this arm of the Lord been revealed ?
Let us lower our heads, and acknowledge our ignorance,
priest and philosopher, one and all.

Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into know-
ledge at some future day. The process of things upon
this earth has been one of amelioration. It is a long
way from the Iguanodon and his contemporaries, to the
President and Members of the British Association.
And whether we regard the improvement from the
scientific or from the theological point of Anew — as the
result of progressive development, or of successive
exhibitions of creative energy — neither view entitles us
to assume that man’s present faculties end the series,
that the process of amelioration ends with him. A
time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific
region, by which we are now enfolded, may ofter itself

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

89

to terrestrial, if not to human, investigation. Two-
thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse the
sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ
requisite for their translation into light does not exist.
And so from this region of darkness and mystery which
surrounds us, rays may now be darting, which require
but the development of the proper intellectual organs
to translate them into knowledge as far surpassing
ours, as ours surpasses that of the wallowing reptiles
which once held possession of this planet. Meanwhile
the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may
be made a power in the human soul ; but it is a power
which has feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may
be, will be, and I hope is turned to account, both in
steadying and strengthening the intellect, and in
rescuing man from that littleness to which, in the
struggle for existence, or for precedence in the world,
he is continually prone.

Musings on the Matterhorn , July 27, 1868.

Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the moun-
tain from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the
impression it made was that of savage strength ; here
we had inexorable decay. But this notion of decay
implied a reference to a period when the Matterhorn
was in the full strength of mountainhood. Thought
naturally ran back to its remoter origin and sculpture.
Nor did thought halt there, but wandered on through
molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers
have regarded, and with good reason, as the proximate
source of all material things. I tried to look at this
universal cloud, containing within itself the prediction

90

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of all that has since occurred ; I tried to imagine it as
the seat of those forces whose action was to issue in
solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve.
Did that formless fog contain potentially the sadness
with which I regarded the Matterhorn ? Did the
thought which now ran back to it simply return to its
primeval home ? If so, had we not better recast our
definitions of matter and force ; for, if life and thought
be the very flower of both, any definition which omits
life and thought must be inadequate, if not untrue.
Are questions like these warranted? Why not? If
the final goal of man has not been yet attained ; if his
development has not been yet arrested, who can say
that such yearnings and questionings are not necessary
to the opening of a finer vision, to the budding and the
growth of diviner powers ? When I look at the heavens
and the earth, at my own body, at my strength and
weakness, even at these ponderings, and ask myself, Is
there no being or thing in the universe that knows
more about these matters than I do ; what is my
answer ? Supposing our theologic schemes of creation,
condemnation, and redemption to be dissipated ; and
the warmth of denial which they excite, and which, as
a motive force, can match the warmth of affirmation,
dissipated at the same time ; would the undeflected
human mind return to the meridian of absolute neutrality
as regards these ultra-physical questions ? Is such a
position one of stable equilibrium ? The channels of
thought being already formed, such are the questions,
without replies, which could run athwart consciousness
during a ten minutes’ halt upon the weathered crest of
the Matterhorn.

91

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for), but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear ;

And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

Tennyson.

VII.

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS.1

rFHERE is an idea regarding the nature of man which
X modern philosophy has sought, and is still seeking, to
raise into clearness ; the idea, namely, of secular growth.
Man is not a thing of yesterday ; nor do I imagine
that the slightest controversial tinge is imported into
this address when I say that he is not a thing of 6,000
years ago. Whether he came originally from stocks or
stones, from nebulous gas or solar fire, I know not ; if
he had any such origin the process of his transform-
ation is as inscrutable to you and me as that of the
grand old legend, according to which 4 the Lord Grod
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a
living soul.’ But however obscure man’s origin may
be, his grow7th is not to be denied. Here a little and
there a little added through the ages have slowly
transformed him from what he was into what he is.
The doctrine has been held that the mind of the child

1 Delivered at University. College, London, Session 1868-69.

92

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

is like a sheet of white paper, on which by education
we can write what characters we please. This doctrine
assuredly needs qualification and correction. In physics,
when an external force is applied to a body with a view
of affecting its inner texture, if we wish to predict the
result, we must know whether the external force con-
spires with or opposes the internal forces of the body
itself ; and in bringing the influence of education to
bear upon the new-born man his inner powers also must
be taken into account. He comes to us as a bundle
of inherited capacities and tendencies, labelled ‘ from
the indefinite past to the indefinite future ; ’ and he
makes his transit from the one to the other through the
education of the present time. The object of that
education is, or ought to be, to provide wise exercise for
his capacities, wise direction for his tendencies, and
through this exercise and this direction to furnish his
mind with such knowledge as may contribute to the
usefulness, the beauty, and the nobleness of his life.

How is this discipline to be secured, this knowledge
imparted? Two rival methods now solicit attention, —
the one organised and equipped, the labour of centuries
having been expended in bringing it to its present
state of perfection ; the other, more or less chaotic, but
becoming daily less so, and giving signs of enormous
power, both as a source of knowledge and as a means of
discipline. These two methods are the classical and the
scientific method. I wish they were not rivals ; it is
only bigotry and short-sightedness that make them so ;
for assuredly it is possible to give both of them fair
play. Though hardly authorised to express an opinion
upon the subject, I nevertheless hold the opinion that
the proper study of a language is an intellectual disci-
pline of the highest kind. If I except discussions on
the comparative merits of Popery and Protestantism,

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS.

93

English grammar was the most important discipline of
my boyhood. The piercing through the involved and
inverted sentences of 4 Paradise Lost ’ ; the linking of
the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative
to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of
the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or
pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in
mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to
bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence,
— all this was to my young mind a discipline of the
highest value, and a source of unflagging delight.
How I rejoiced when I found a great author tripping,
and was fairly able to pin him to a corner from which
there was no escape ! As I speak, some of the sentences
which exercised me when a boy rise to my recollection.
For instance, 4 He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear ; ’ where the 4 He ’ is left, as it were, floating
in mid air without any verb to support it. I speak
thus of English because it was of real value to me. I
do not speak of other languages because their educa-
tional value for me was almost insensible. But know-
ing the value of English so well, I should be the last
to deny, or even to doubt, the high discipline involved
in the proper study of Latin and Gfreek.

That study, moreover, has other merits and recom-
mendations. It is, as I have said, organised and
systematised by long-continued use. It is an instru-
ment wielded by some of our best intellects in the
education of youth ; and it can point to results in the
achievements of our foremost men. What, then, has
science to offer which is in the least degree likely to
compete with such a system ? I cannot better reply
than by recurring to the grand old story from which I
have already quoted. Speaking of the world and all
that therein is, of the sky and the stars around it, the

94

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ancient writer says, ‘And God saw all that he had
made, and behold it was very good.’ It is the body of
things thus described which science offers to the study
of man. There is a very renowned argument much
prized and much quoted by theologians, in which the
universe is compared to a watch. Let us deal prac-
tically with this comparison. Supposing a watch-
maker, having completed his instrument, to be so
satisfied with his work as to call it very good, what
would you understand him to mean? You would not
suppose that he referred to the dial-plate in front and
the chasing of the case behind, so much as to the wheels
and pinions, the springs and jewelled pivots of the
works within — to those qualities and powers, in short,
which enable the watch to perform its work as a keeper
of time. With regard to the knowledge of such a watch
he would be a mere ignoramus who would content
himself with outward inspection. I do not wish to say
one severe word here to-day, but I fear that many of
those who are very loud in their praise of the works of
the Lord know them only in this outside and superficial
way. It is the inner works of the universe which
science reverently uncovers ; it is the study of these
that she recommends as a discipline worthy of all
acceptation.

The ultimate problem of physics is to reduce
matter by analysis to its lowest condition of divisibility,
and force to its simplest manifestations, and then by
synthesis to construct from these elements the world as
it stands. We are still a long way from the final solu-
tion of this problem ; and when the solution comes, it
will be more one of spiritual insight than of actual
observation. But though we are still a long way from
this complete intellectual mastery of nature, we have
conquered vast regions of it, have learned their polities

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS.

95

and the play of their powers. We live upon a ball of
8,000 miles in diameter, swathed by an atmosphere
of unknown height. This ball has been molten by
heat, chilled to a solid, and sculptured by water. It
is made up of substances possessing distinctive pro-
perties and modes of action, which offer problems to
the intellect, some profitable to the child, others taxing
the highest powers of the philosopher. Our native
sphere turns on its axis, and revolves in space. It
is one of a band which all do the same. It is il-
luminated bv a sun which, though nearly a hundred
millions of miles distant, can be brought virtually into
our closets and there subjected to examination. It has
its winds and clouds, its rain and frost, its light, heat,
sound, electricity, and magnetism. And it has its vast
kingdoms of animals and vegetables. To a most amaz-
ing extent the human mind has conquered these things,
and revealed the logic which runs through them.
Were they facts only, without logical relationship,
science might, as a means of discipline, suffer in com-
parison with language. But the whole body of pheno-
mena is instinct with law ; the facts are hung on
principles, and the value of physical science as a means
of discipline consists in the motion of the intellect,
both inductively and deductively, along the lines of
law marked out by phenomena. As regards the disci-
pline to which I have already referred as derivable
from the study of languages, — that, and more, is
involved in the study of physical science. Indeed, I
believe it would be possible so to limit and arrange the
study of a portion of physics as to render the mental
exercise involved in it almost qualitatively the same as
that involved in the unravelling of a language.

I have thus far confined myself to the purely intel-
lectual side of this question. But man is not all in-

96

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

telleet. If he were so, science would, I believe, be his
proper nutriment. But he feels as well as thinks ; he
is receptive of the sublime and beautiful as well as of
the true. Indeed, I believe that even the intellectual
action of a complete man is, consciously or uncon-
sciously, sustained by an undercurrent of the emotions.
It is vain to attempt to separate the moral and emo-
tional from the intellectual. Let a man but observe
himself, and he will, if I mistake not, find that in
nine cases out of ten, the emotions constitute the
motive force which pushes his intellect into action.
The reading of the works of two men, neither of them
imbued with the spirit of modern science — neither of
them, indeed, friendly to that spirit — has placed me here
to-day. These men are the English Carlyle and the Ame-
rican Emerson. I must ever gratefully remember that
through three long cold German winters Carlyle placed
me in my tub, even when ice was on its surface, at five
o’clock every morning — not slavishly, but cheerfully,
meeting each day’s studies with a resolute will, deter-
mined whether victor or vanquished not to shrink from
difficulty. I never should have gone through Analytical
Geometry and the Calculus had it not been for those men.
I never should have become a physical investigator,
and hence without them I should not have been here
to-day. They told me what I ought to do in a way
that caused me to do it, and all my consequent intel-
lectual action is to be traced to this purely moral source.
To Carlyle and Emerson I ought to add Fichte, the
greatest representative of pure idealism. These three
unscientific men made me a practical scientific worker.
They called out ‘ Act ! ’ I hearkened to the summons,
taking the liberty, however, of determining for myself
the direction which effort was to take.

And I may now cry ‘ Act ! ’ but the potency of

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS.

97

action must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if
the gun be not charged there is no result. We are
creators in the intellectual world as little as in the
physical. We may remove obstacles, and render latent
capacities active, but we cannot suddenly change the
nature of man. The £ new birth ’ itself implies the
pre-existence of a character which requires not to be
created but brought forth. You cannot by any amount
of missionary labour suddenly transform the savage into
the civilised Christian. The improvement of man is
secular — not the work of an hour or of a day. But
though indubitably bound by our organisations, no
man knows what the potentialities of any human mind
may be, requiring only release to be brought into
action. There are in the mineral world certain
crystals — certain forms, for instance, of fluor-spar, which
have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which
nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within
them. In them case the potential has never become
actual — the light is in fact held back by a molecular
detent. When these crystals are warmed, the detent is
lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins. I
know not how many of you may be in the condition of
this fluor-spar. For aught I know, every one of you
may be in this condition, requiring but the proper
agent to be applied — the proper word to be spoken — to
remove a detent, and to render you conscious of light
and warmth within yourselves and sources of both to
others.

The circle of human nature, then, is not complete
without the arc of the emotions. The lilies of the
field have a value for us beyond their botanical ones
— a certain lightening of the heart accompanies the
declaration that 4 Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these.’ The sound of the village

VOL. II.

H

98

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

bell has a value beyond its acoustical one. The setting
sun has a value beyond its optical one. The starry
heavens, as you know, had for Immanuel Kant a value
beyond their astronomical one. I think it very desir-
able to keep this horizon of the emotions open, and
not to permit either priest or philosopher to draw down
his shutters between you and it. Here the dead lan-
guages, which are sure to be beaten by science in the
purely intellectual fight, have an irresistible claim.
They supplement the work of science by exalting and
refining the aesthetic faculty, and must on this account
be cherished by all who desire to see human culture
complete. There must be a reason for the fascination
which these languages have so long exercised upon
powerful and elevated minds — a fascination which will
probably continue for men of Greek and Roman mould
to the end of time.

In connection with this question one very obvious
danger besets many of the more earnest spirits of our
day — the danger of haste in endeavouring to give the
feelings repose. We are distracted by systems of
theology and philosophy which were taught to us when
young, and which now excite in us a hunger and a
thirst for knowledge not proved to be attainable.
There are periods when the judgment ought to remain
in suspense, the data on which a decision might be
based being absent. This discipline of suspending the
judgment is a common one in science, but not so
common as it ought to be elsewhere. I walked down
Regent Street some time ago with a man of great gifts
and acquirements, discussing with him various theo-
logical questions. I could not accept his views of the
origin and destiny of the universe, nor was I prepared
to enunciate any definite views of my own. He turned
to me at length and said, ‘ You surely must have a

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS.

99

theory of the universe.’ That I should in one way or
another have solved this mystery of mysteries seemed
to my friend a matter of course. 4 1 have not even a
theory of magnetism’ was my reply. We ought to
learn to wait. We ought assuredly to pause before
closing with the advances of those expounders of the
ways of Grod to men, who offer us intellectual peace
at the modest cost of intellectual life.

The teachers of the world ought to be its best men,
and for the present at all events such men must learn
self-trust. By the fullness and freshness of their own
lives and utterances they must awaken life in others.
The hopes and terrors which influenced our fathers are
passing away, and our trust henceforth must rest on
the innate strength of man’s moral nature. And here,
I think, the poet will have a great part to play in the
future culture of the world. To him, when he rightly
understands his mission, and does not flinch from the
tonic discipline which it assuredly demands, we have a
right to look for that heightening and brightening of
life which so many of us need. To him it is given for
a long time to come to fill those shores which the reces-
sion of the theologic tide has left exposed. Void of
offence to science, he may freely deal with conceptions
which science shuns, and become the illustrator and
interpreter of that Power which as

‘Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,’

has hitherto filled and strengthened the human heart.

Let me utter one practical word in conclusion

take care of your health. There have been men who
by wise attention to this point might have risen to any
eminence — might have made great discoveries, written
great poems, commanded armies, or ruled states, but
who by unwise neglect of this point have come to

100

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

nothing. Imagine Hercules as oarsman in a rotten
boat ; what can he do there but by the very force of
his stroke expedite the ruin of his craft ? Take care
then of the timbers of your boat, and avoid all practices
likely to introduce either wet or dry rot amongst them.
And this is not to be accomplished by desultory or
intermittent efforts of the will, but by the formation of
habits. The will no doubt has sometimes to put forth
its strength in order to crush the special temptation.
But the formation of right habits is essential to your
permanent security. They diminish your chance of
falling when assailed, and they augment your chance of
recovery when overthrown.

101

If thou would ’st know the mystic song
Chaunted when the sphere was young,

Aloft, abroad, the pasan swells,

O “wise man, hear’st thou half it tells ?

To the open ear it sings
The early genesis of things ;

Of tendency through endless ages
Of star-dust and star-pilgrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time,

Of the old floods’ subsiding slime,

Of chemic matter, force and form,

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm.

The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is,

Melts things that be to things that seem,

And solid nature to a dream.’

Emerson.

Was war’ ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse,

Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse
Ihm ziemt’s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,

Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen.’

Goethe.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 1

‘ Lastly, physical investigation, more than anything besides, helps to
teach us the actual value and right use of the Imagination — of that
wondrous faculty, which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray
into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and
shadows ; but which, properly controlled by experience and reflection,
becomes the noblest attribute of man ; the source of poetic genius, the

1 Discourse delivered before the British Association at Liverpool,
September 16, 1870.

102

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid of which Newton
would never have invented fluxions, nor Doxy have decomposed the
earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus leave found another Conti-
nent.'— Address to the Royal Society by its President Sir Benjamin
Brodie, November 30, 1859.

I CARRIED with me to the Alps this year the burden
of this evening’s work. Save from memory I had
no direct aid upon the mountains ; but to spur up the
emotions, on which so much depends, as well as to
nourish indirectly the intellect and will, I took with
me four works, comprising two volumes of poetry,
Goethe’s 4 Farbenlehre,’ and the work on 4 Logic ’
recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain. In Goethe,
so noble otherwise, I chiefly noticed the self-inflicted
hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain against the
philosophy of Newton. Mr. Bain I found, for the most
part, learned and practical, shining generally with a
dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional
strength, which proved that even logicians share the
common fire of humanity. He interested me most
when he became the mirror of my own condition.
Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for man
to be alone, and the sorrows of thought are more
patiently borne when we find that they have been
experienced by another. From certain passages in
his book I could infer that Mr. Bain was no stranger to
such sorrows. Speaking for example of the ebb of-
intellectual force, which we all from time to time
experience, Mr. Bain says : 4 The uncertainty where to
look for the next opening of discovery brings the pain
of conflict and the debility of indecision.’ These
words have in them the true ring of personal expe-
lience. The action of the investigator is periodic.
He grapples with a subject of enquiry, wrestles with it,
and exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for the

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 103

time being. He breathes a space, and then renews
the struggle in another field. Now this period of
halting between two investigations is not always one of
pure repose. It is often a period of doubt and discom-
fort—of gloom and ennui. ‘ The uncertainty where to
look for the next opening of discovery brings the pain
of conflict and the debility of indecision.’ It was
under such conditions that I had to equip myself for
the hour and the ordeal that are now come.

The disciplines of common life are, in great part,
exercises in the relations of space, or in the mental
grouping of bodies in space ; and, by such exercises,
the public mind is, to some extent, prepared for the
reception of physical conceptions. Assuming this
preparation on your part, the wish gradually grew
within me to trace, and to enable you to trace, some of
the more occult features and operations of Light and
Colour. I wished, if possible, to take you beyond the
boundary of mere observation, into a region where
things are intellectually discerned, and to show you
there the hidden mechanism of optical action.

But how are those hidden things to be revealed ?
Philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot
transcend experience : we can, at all events, carry it
a long way from its origin. We can magnify, diminish,
qualify, and combine experiences, so as to render them
fit for purposes entirely new. In explaining sensible
phenomena, we habitually form mental images of the
ultra-sensible. There are Tories even in science who
regard Imagination as a faculty to be feared and
avoided rather than employed. They have observed its
action in weak vessels, and are unduly impressed by its
disasters. But they might with equal justice point to
exploded boilers as an argument against the use of

104

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

steam. With accurate experiment and observation to
work upon, Imagination becomes the architect of
physical theory. Newton’s passage from a falling apple
to a falling moon was an act of the prepared imagina-
tion, without which the ‘ laws of Kepler ’ could never
have been traced to their foundations. Out of the facts
of chemistry the constructive imagination of Dalton
formed the atomic theory. Davy was richly endowed
with the imaginative faculty, while with Faraday its
exercise was incessant, preceding, accompanying and
guiding all his experiments. His strength and fertility
as a discoverer is to be referred in great part to the
stimulus of his imagination. Scientific men fight shy
of the word because of its ultra-scientific connotations ;
but the fact is that without the exercise of this power,
our knowledge of nature would be a mere tabulation
of co-existences and sequences. We should still believe
in the succession of day and night, of summer and
winter ; but the conception of Force would vanish from
our universe ; causal relations would disappear, and
with them that science which is now binding the parts
of nature to an organic whole.

I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances
the use that scientific men have already made of this
power of imagination, and to indicate afterwards some
of the fimther uses that they are likely to make of it.
Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences. Ob-
serve the falling of heavy rain-drops into a tranquil
pond. Each drop as it strikes the water becomes a
centre of disturbance, from which a series of ring-
ripples expand outwards. Gravity and inertia are the
agents by which this wave-motion is produced, and a
rough experiment will suffice to show that the rate of
propagation does not amount to a foot a second. A
series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced by a

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 105

body plunged in the water, as the wavelets reach it in
succession. But a finer motion is at the same time set
up and propagated. If the head and ears be immersed
in the water, as in an experiment of h ranklin’s, the
tick of the drop is heard. Now, this sonorous impulse
is propagated, not at the rate of a foot, but at the rate
of 4,700 feet a second. In this case it is not the
gravity but the elasticity of the water that comes
into play. Every liquid particle pushed against its
neighbour delivers up its motion with extreme rapidity,
and the pulse is propagated as a thrill. The incom-
pressibility of water, as illustrated by the famous
Florentine experiment, is a measure of its elasticity ;
and to the possession of this property, in so high a
degree, the rapid transmission of a sound-pulse through
water is to be ascribed.

But water, as you know, is not necessary to the
conduction of sound ; air is its most common vehicle.
And you know that when the air possesses the particular
density and elasticity corresponding to the temperature
of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090
feet a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the
velocity in water ; the reason being that though the
greater weight of the water tends to diminish the
velocity, the enormous molecular elasticity of the liquid
far more than atones for the disadvantage due to weight.
By various contrivances we can compel the vibrations
of the air to declare themselves ; we know the length
and frequency of the sonorous waves, and we have also
obtained great mastery over the various methods by
which the air is thrown into vibration. We know the
phenomena and laws of vibrating rods, of organ-pipes,
strings, membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish
one sound by another. We know the physical meaning
of music and noise, of harmony and discord. In short,

106

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

as regards sound in general, we have a very clear notion
of the external physical processes which correspond to
our sensations.

In the phenomena of sound, we travel a very little
way from downright sensible experience. Still the
imagination is to some extent exercised. The bodily
eye, for example, cannot see the condensations and rare-
factions of the waves of sound. We construct them in
thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as
in that of the air itself. But now our experience is to
be carried into a new region, where a new use is to be
made of it. Having mastered the cause and mechanism
of sound, we desire to know the cause and mechanism
of light. We wish to extend our enquiries from the
auditory to the optic nerve. There is in the human
intellect a power of expansion — I might almost call it
a power of creation — which is brought into play by the
simple brooding upon facts. The legend of the spirit
brooding over chaos may have originated in experi-
ence of this power. In the case now before us it has
manifested itself by transplanting into space, for the
purposes of light, an adequately modified form of the
mechanism of sound. We know intimately whereon
the velocity of sound depends. When we lessen the
density of the aerial medium, and preserve its elasticity
constant, we augment the velocity. When we heighten
the elasticity, and keep the density constant, we also
augment the velocity. A small density, therefore, and
a great elasticity, are the two things necessary to rapid
propagation. Now light is known to move with the
astounding velocity of 186,000 miles a second. How is
such a velocity to be obtained ? By boldly diffusing in
space a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.

Let us make such a medium our starting-point,
and, endowing it with one or two other necessary

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

107

qualities, let us handle it in accordance with strict
mechanical laws. Let us then carry our results from
the world of theory into the world of sense, and see
whether our deductions do not issue in the very phe-
nomena of light which ordinary knowledge and skilled
experiment reveal. If in all the multiplied varieties
of these phenomena, including those ot the most remote
and entangled description, this fundamental conception
' always brings us face to face with the truth ; if no
contradiction to our deductions from it be found in
external nature, but on all sides agreement and verifi-
cation ; if, moreover, as in the case of Conical Refraction
and in other cases, it actually forces upon our attention
phenomena which no eye had previously seen, and
which no mind had previously imagined — such a con-
ception, must, we think, be something more than a
mere figment of the scientific fancy. In forming it,
that composite and creative power, in which reason and
imagination are united, has, we believe, led us into a
world not less real than that of the senses, and of which
the world of sense itself is the suggestion and, to a
great extent, the outcome.

Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you
immovably in this or in any other theoretic conception.
With all our belief of it, it will be well to keep the
theory of a luminiferous aether plastic and capable of
change. You may, moreover, urge that, although the
r phenomena occur as if the medium existed, the absolute
I lemonstration of its existence is still wanting. Far be
t from me to deny to this reasoning such validity as it
nay fairly claim. Let us endeavour by means of
malogy to form a fair estimate of its force. You be-
ieve that in society you are surrounded by reasonable
loeangs like yourself. You are, perhaps, as firmly con-
inced of this as of anything. What is your warrant for

108

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

this conviction ? Simply and solely this : your fellow-
creatures behave as if they were reasonable; the hypo-
thesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the facts.
To take an eminent example : you believe that our
President is a reasonable being. Why ? There is no
known method of superposition by which any one of us
can apply himself intellectually to any other, so as to
demonstrate coincidence as regards the possession of
reason. If, therefore, you hold our President to be
reasonable, it is because he behaves as if he were
reasonable. As in the case of the aether, beyond the
‘ as if ’ you cannot go. Nay, I should not wonder if a
close comparison of the data on which both inferences
rest, caused many respectable persons to conclude that
the aether had the best of it.

This universal medium, this light-aether as it is
called, is the vehicle, not the origin, of wave-motion.
It receives and transmits, but it does not create.
Whence does it derive the motions it conveys ? For
the most part from luminous bodies. By the motion of
a luminous body I do not mean its sensible motion, such
as the flicker of a candle, or the shooting out of red
prominences from the limb of the sun. I mean an
intestine motion of the atoms or molecules of the
luminous body. But here a certain reserve is necessary.
Many chemists of the present day refuse to speak of
atoms and molecules as real things. Their caution
leads them to stop short of the clear, sharp, mechanically
intelligible atomic theory enunciated by Dalton, or any
form of that theory, and to make the doctrine of
4 multiple proportions ’ their intellectual bourne. I
respect the caution, though I think it is here misplaced.
The chemists who recoil from these notions of atoms
and molecules accept, without hesitation, the Un-
dulatory Theory of Light. Like you and me they one

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 109

and all believe in an aether and its light-producing
waves. JLet us consider what this belief involves.
Bring your imaginations once more into play, and
figure a series of sound-waves passing through air.
Follow them up to their origin, and what do you there
find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may
be the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an
organ-pipe, or it may be a stretched string. Follow in
the same manner a train of aether-waves to their source;
remembering at the same time that your aether is
matter, dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject
to, and determined by, mechanical laws. What then
do you expect to find as the source of a series of aether-
waves ? Ask your imagination if it will accept a
vibrating multiple proportion — a numerical ratio in a
state of oscillation ? I do not think it will. You
cannot crown the edifice with this abstraction. The
scientific imagination, which is here authoritative,
demands, as the origin and cause of a series of aether-
waves, a particle of vibrating matter quite as definite,
though it may be excessively minute, as that which
gives origin to a musical sound. Such a particle we
name an atom or a molecule. I think the intellect,
when focussed so as to give definition without penumbral
haze, is sure to realise this image at the last.

With the view of preserving thought continuous
throughout this discourse, and of preventing either
failure of knowledge or of memory, from causing any
rent in our picture, I here propose to run rapidly over
a bit of ground which is probably familiar to most of
you, but which I am anxious to make familiar to you
all. The waves generated in the sether by the swinging
atoms of luminous bodies are of different lengths and
amplitudes. The amplitude is the width of swing of

110 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the individual particles of the waves. In water-waves
it is the vertical height of the crest above the trough,
while the length of the wave is the horizontal distance
between two consecutive crests. The aggregate of
waves emitted by the sun may be broadly divided into
two classes : the one class competent, the other in-
competent, to excite vision. But the light-producing
waves differ markedly among themselves in size, form,
and force. The length of the largest of these waves is
about twice that of the smallest, but the amplitude of
the largest is probably a hundred times that of the
smallest. Now the force or energy of the wave, which,
expressed with reference to sensation, means the in-
tensity of the light, is proportional to the square of the
amplitude. Hence the amplitude being one-hundred-
fold, the energy of the largest light-giving waves would
be ten-thousandfold that of the smallest. This is not
improbable. I use these figures not with a view to j
numerical accuracy, but to give you definite ideas of the
differences that probably exist among the light-giving
waves. And if we take the whole range of solar
radiation into account— its non-visual as well as its
visual waves — I think it probable that the force, or
energy, of the largest wave is more than a million times
that of the smallest.

Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the dif-
ferent light-waves produce different colours. Bed, for
example, is produced by the largest waves, violet by the
smallest, while green is produced by a wave of inter-
mediate length and amplitude. On entering from air
into a more highly refracting substance, such as glass
or water, or the sulphide of carbon, all the waves are
retarded, but the smallest ones most. This furnishes a
means of separating the different classes ot waves from
each other; in other words, of analysing the light.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. Ill

Sent through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun
are turned aside in different degrees from their direct
course, the red least, the violet most. They are
virtually pulled asunder, and they paint upon a white
screen placed to receive them 4 the solar spectrum.’
Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity of
colours ; but the limits of language, and of our powers
of distinction, cause it to be divided into seven seg-
ments : red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
These are the seven primary or prismatic colours.

Separately, or mixed in various proportions, the
solar waves yield all the colours observed in nature and
employed in art. Collectively, they give us the im-
pression of whiteness. Pure unsifted solar light is
white ; and, if all the wave-constituents of such light
be reduced in the same proportion, the light, though
diminished in intensity, will still be white. The white-
ness of snow with the sun shining upon it, is barely
tolerable to the eye. The same snow under an over-
cast firmament is still white. Such a firmament en-
feebles the light by reflecting it upwards ; and when
we stand above a cloud-field — on an Alpine summit, for
instance, or on the top of Snowdon — and see, in the
proper direction, the sun shining on the clouds below
us, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds, in
fact, divide the solar light impinging on them into two
parts — a reflected part and a transmitted part, in each
of which the proportions of wave-motion which produce
the impression of whiteness are sensibly preserved.

It will be understood that the condition of white-
ness would fail if all the waves were diminished equally ,
or by the same absolute quantity. They must be re-
duced ; proportionately , instead of equally. If by the
act of reflection the waves of red light are split into
exact halves, then, to preserve the light white, the

112

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

waves of yellow, orange, green, and blue, must also be
split into exact halves. In short, the reduction must
take place, not by absolutely equal quantities, but by
equal fractional parts. In white light the preponder-
ance, as regards energy, of the larger over the smaller
waves must always be immense. Were the case other-
wise, the visual correlative, blue , of the smaller waves
would have the upper hand in our sensations.

Not only are the waves of sether reflected by clouds,
by solids, and by liquids, but when they pass from light
air to dense, or from dense air to light, a portion of the
wave-motion is always reflected. Now our atmosphere
changes continually in density from top to bottom.
It will help our conceptions if we regard it as made up
of a series of thin concentric layers, or shells of air,
each shell being of the same density throughout, a
small and sudden change of density occurring in passing
from shell to shell. Light would be reflected at the
limiting surfaces of all these shells, and their action
would be practically the same as that of the real
atmosphere. And now I would ask your imagination
to picture this act of reflection. What must become
of the reflected light? The atmospheric layers turn
their convex surfaces towards the sun ; they are so
many convex mirrors of feeble power; and you will
immediately perceive that the light regularly reflected
from these surfaces cannot reach the earth at all, but is
dispersed in space. Light thus reflected cannot, there-
fore, be the light of the sky.

But, though the sun’s light is not reflected in this
fashion from the aerial layers to the earth, there is
indubitable evidence to show that the light of our
firmament is scattered light. Proofs of the most
cogent description could be here adduced ; but we need
only consider that we receive light at the same time

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 113

from all parts of the hemisphere of heaven. The light
of the firmament comes to us across the direction of
the solar rays, and even against the direction of the
solar rays ; and this lateral and opposing rush of wave-
motion can only be due to the rebound of the waves
from the air itself, or from something suspended in the
air. It is also evident that, unlike the action of clouds,
the solar light is not reflected by the sky in the pro-
portions which produce white. The sky is blue, which
indicates an excess of the shorter waves. In accounting
for the colour of the sky, the first question suggested
by analogy would undoubtedly be, Is not the air blue ?
The blueness of the air has, in fact, been given as a
solution of the blueness of the sky. But how, if the
air be blue, can the light of sunrise and sunset, which
travels through vast distances of air, be yellow, orange,
or even red ? The passage of white solar light through
a blue medium could by no possibility redden the light.
The hypothesis of a blue air is therefore untenable.
In fact the agent, whatever it is, which sends us the
light of the sky, exercises in so doing a dichroitic
action. The light reflected is blue, the light trans-
mitted is orange or red. A marked distinction is thus
exhibited between the matter of the sky, and that of
an ordinary cloud, which exercises no such dichroitic
action.

By the scientific use of the imagination we may
hope to penetrate this mystery. The cloud takes no
note of size on the part of the waves of aether, but reflects
them all alike. It exercises no selective action. Now
the cause of this may be that the cloud particles are
so large, in comparison with the waves of sether, as to
reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects an
Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced by a sea-
bird’s wing ; and in the presence of large reflecting sur-

VOL. II. i

114

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

faces, the existing differences of magnitude among the
waves of aether may disappear. But supposing the re-
flecting particles, instead of being very large, to be very
small in comparison with the size of the waves. In
this case, instead of the whole wave being fronted and
thrown back, a small portion only is shivered off. The
great mass of the wave passes over such a particle with-
out reflection. Scatter, then, a handful of such minute
foreign particles in our atmosphere, and set imagina-
tion to watch their action upon the solar waves. Waves
of all sizes impinge upon the particles, and you see at
every collision a portion of the impinging wave struck
off; all the waves of the spectrum, from the extreme
red to the extreme violet, being thus acted upon.

Remembering that the red waves stand to the blue
much in the relation of billows to ripples, we have to
consider whether those extremely small particles are
competent to scatter all the waves in the same pro-
portion. If they be not — and a little reflection will
make it clear that they are not — the production of
colour must be an incident of the scattering. Large-
ness is a thing of relation ; and the smaller the wave,
the greater is the relative size of any particle on which
the wave impinges, and the greater also the ratio of the
portion scattered to the total wave A pebble, placed
in the way of the ring-ripples produced by heavy rain-
drops on a tranquil pond, will scatter a large fraction
of each ripple, while the fractional part of a larger
wave thrown back by the same pebble might be infini-
tesimal. Now we have already made it clear to our
minds that to preserve the solar light white, its consti-
tuent proportions must not be altered ; but in the act
of division performed by these very small particles the
proportions are altered ; an undue fraction of the
smaller waves is scattered by the particles, and, as a

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 115

consequence, in the scattered light, blue will be the
predominant colour. The other colours of the spectrum
must, to some extent, be associated with the blue.
They are not absent, but deficient. We ought, in fact,
to have them all, but in diminishing proportions, from
the violet to the red.

We have here presented a case to the imagination,
and, assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we
have, I think, fairly reasoned our way to the conclusion,
that were particles, small in comparison to the sizes of
the aether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light
scattered by those particles would be exactly such as we
observe in our azure skies. When this light is analysed,
all the colours of the spectrum are found, and they are
found in the proportions indicated by our conclusion.
Blue is not the sole, but it is the predominant colour.

Let us now turn our attention to the light which
passes unscattered among the particles. How must it
be finally affected ? By its successive collisions with
the particles the white light is more and more robbed
of its shorter waves ; it therefore loses more and more
of its due proportion of blue. The result may be anti-
cipated. The transmitted light, where short distances
are involved, will appear yellowish. But as the sun
sinks towards the horizon the atmospheric distances
increase, and consequently the number of the scattering
particles. They abstract in succession the violet, the
indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of
green. The transmitted light under such circumstances
must pass from yellow through orange to red. This
also is exactly what we find in nature. Thus, while
the reflected light gives us at noon the deep azure of
the Alpine skies, the transmitted light gives us at
sunset the warm crimson of the Alpine snows. The
phenomena certainly occur as if our atmosphere were a

116

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

medium rendered slightly turbid by the mechanical
suspension of exceedingly small foreign particles.

Here, as before, we encounter our sceptical ‘ as if.’
It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and
ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can, on the weak
points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution
defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the
phenomena, probability grows like growing health,
until in the end the malady of doubt is completely
extirpated. The first question that naturally arises is
this : Can small particles be really proved to act in the
manner indicated ? No doubt of it. Each one of you
can submit the question to an experimental test.
Water will not dissolve resin, but spirit will dissolve
it ; and when spirit holding resin in solution is dropped
into water, the resin immediately separates in solid
particles, which render the water milky. The coarse-
ness of this precipitate depends on the quantity of the
dissolved resin. You can cause it to separate either
in thick clots or in exceedingly fine particles. Professor
Briicke has given us the proportions which produce
particles particularly suited to our present purpose.
One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved in eighty-
seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and the transparent
solution is allowed to drop into a beaker containing
clear water, kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly fine
precipitate is thus formed, which declares its presence
by its action upon light. Placing a dark surface be-
hind the beaker, and permitting the light to fall into
it from the top or front, the medium is seen to be
distinctly blue. It is not perhaps so perfect a blue as
may be seen on exceptional days among the Alps, but
it is a very fair sky- blue. A trace of soap in water
gives a tint of blue. London, and I fear Liverpool,
milk makes an approximation to the same colour.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 1 1 7

through the operation of the same cause ; and Helm-
holtz has irreverently disclosed the fact that the deepest
blue eye is simply a turbid medium.

The action of turbid media upon light was illustrated
by Goethe, who, though unacquainted with the undu-
latory theory, was led by his experiments to regard the
firmament as an illuminated turbid medium, with the
darkness of space behind it. He describes glasses
showing a bright yellow by transmitted, and a beautiful
blue by reflected, light. Professor Stokes, who was
probably the first to discern the real nature of the action
of small particles on the waves of aether,1 describes a
glass of a similar kind.2 Capital specimens of such
glass are to be found at Salviati’s, in St. James’s Street.
What artists call ‘ chill ’ is no doubt an effect of this
description. Through the action of minute particles,
the browns of a picture often present the appearance of
the bloom of a plum. By rubbing the varnish with a
silk handkerchief optical continuity is established and
the chill disappears. Some years ago I witnessed Mr.
Hirst experimenting at Zermatt on the turbid water
of the Visp. When kept still for a day or so, the
grosser matter sank, but the finer particles remained
suspended, and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the
water. The blueness of certain Alpine lakes has
been shown to be in part due to this cause. Professor

1 This is inferred from conversation. I am not aware that
Professor Stokes has published anything upon the subject.

2 This glass, by reflected light, had a colour ‘ strongly resembling
that of a decoction of horse-chestnut bark.’ Curiously enough,
Goethe refers to this very decoction : ‘ Man nehme einen Streifen
frischer Rinde von der Rosskastanie, man stecke denselben in ein
Glas Wasser, und in der kiirzesten Zeit werden wir das vollkom-
menste Himmelblau entstehen sehen.’ — Goethe’s Werke , B. xxix.
p. 24.

118

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Itoscoe has noticed several striking cases of a similar
kind. In a very remarkable paper the late Principal
Forbes showed that steam issuing from the safety-valve
of a locomotive, when favourably observed, exhibits at
a certain stage of its condensation the colours of the
sky. It is blue by reflected light, and orange or red by
transmitted light. The same effect, as pointed out by
Goethe, is to some extent exhibited by peat-smoke.
More than ten years ago, I amused myself by observ-
ing, on a calm day at Killarney, the straight smoke-
columns rising from the cabin-chimneys. It was easy
to project the lower portion of a column against a dark
pine, and its upper portion against a bright cloud. The
smoke in the former case was blue, being seen mainly
by reflected light; in the latter case it was reddish,
being seen mainly by transmitted light. Such smoke
was not in exactly the condition to give us the glow
of the Alps, but it was a step in this direction.
Briicke’s fine precipitate above referred to looks
yellowish by transmitted light ; but, by duly strengthen-
ing the precipitate, you may render the white light ot
noon as ruby-coloured as the sun, when seen through
Liverpool smoke, or upon Alpine horizons. I do not,
however, point to the gross smoke arising from coal as
an illustration of the action of small particles, because
such smoke soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue,
instead of sending them to the eyes of the observer.

These multifarious facts, and numberless others
which cannot now be referred to, are explained by
reference to the single principle, that, where the scattei-
ing particles are small in comparison to the sethereal
waves, we have in the reflected light a greater propor-
tion of the smaller waves, and in the transmitted light
a greater proportion of the larger waves, than existed
in the original white light. The consequence, as

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

119

regards sensation, is that in the one case blue is pre-
dominant, and in the other orange or red. Our best
microscopes can readily reveal objects not more than
A th of an inch in diameter. This is less than

5 0 0 0 0

the length of a wave of red light. Indeed a first-rate
microscope would enable us to discern objects not
exceeding in diameter the length of the smallest waves
of the visible spectrum.1 By the microscope, therefore,
we can test our particles. If they be as large as the
light-waves they will infallibly be seen ; and if they be
not so seen, it is because they are smaller. Some
months ago I placed in the hands of our President a
liquid containing Briicke’s precipitate. The liquid was
milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied to it his highest
microscopic power. He satisfied me that had particles
of even ^ 0 6th of an inch in diameter existed in the
liquid, they could not have escaped detection. But no
particles were seen. Under the microscope the turbid
liquid was not to be distinguished from distilled water.2

But we have it in our power to imitate, far more
closely than we have hitherto done, the natural con-
ditions of this problem. We can generate, in air,
artificial skies, and prove their perfect identity with
the natural one, as regards the exhibition of a number
of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a continuous
process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect sky-
matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter
on the one side, and with molar matter, or matter in
sensible masses, on the other. In illustration of this, I

1 Dallinger and Drysdale have recently measured cilia aWooo^1
of an inch in diameter. 1878.

- Like Dr. Burdon Sanderson’s ‘pyrogen,’ the particles of mastic
passed, without sensible hindrance, through filtering-paper. By
such filtering no freedom from suspended particles is secured. The
application of a condensed beam to the filtrate renders this at once
evident.

120

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

will take an experiment suggested by some of my own
researches, and described by M. Morren of Marseilles
at the Exeter meeting of the British Association.
Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphurous acid
gas, two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur consti-
tuting the molecule of sulphurous acid. It has been
recently shown that waves of aether issuing from a
strong source, such as the sun or the electric light, are
competent to shake asunder the atoms of gaseous mole-
cules. 1 A chemist would call this, 4 decomposition ’ by
light ; but it behoves us, who are examining the power
and function of the imagination, to keep constantly
before us the physical images which underlie our terms.
Therefore I say, sharply and definitely, that the compo-
nents of the molecules of sulphurous acid are shaken
asunder by the aether-waves. Enclosing sulphurous
acid in a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark room, and
sending through it a powerful beam of light, we at
first see nothing : the vessel containing the gas seems
as empty as a vacuum. Soon, however, along the
track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue colour is observed,
which is due to light scattered by the liberated parti-
cles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows more
intense ; it then becomes whitish ; and ends in a more
or less perfect white. When the action is continued
long enough, the tube is filled with a dense cloud of
sulphur particles, which by the application of proper
means may be rendered individually visible. 2

Here, then, our aether-waves untie the bond of chemi-
cal affinity, and liberate a body — sulphur — which at

1 See ‘ New Chemical Reactions produced by Light,’ vol. i. p.

2 M. Morren was mistaken in supposing that a modicum of
sulphurous acid, in the drying tubes, had any share in the produc-
tion of the ‘ actinic clouds ’ described by me. A beautiful case of
molecular instability in the presence of light is furnished by
peroxide of chlorine as proved by Professor Dewar. 1878.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

121

ordinary temperatures is a solid, and which therefore
soon becomes an object of the senses. We have first
of all the free atoms of sulphur, which are incompetent
to stir the retina sensibly with scattered light. But
these atoms gradually coalesce and form ’particles ,
which grow larger by continual accretion, until after a
minute or two they appear as sky-matter. In this
condition they are individually invisible ; but collec-
tively they send an amount of wave-motion to the
retina, sufficient to produce the firmamental blue. The
particles continue, or may be caused to continue, in this
condition for a considerable time, during which no micro-
scope can cope with them. But they grow slowly larger,
and pass by insensible gradations into the state of cloud ,
when they can no longer elude the armed eye. Thus,
without solution of continuity, we start with matter in
the atom, and end with matter in the mass ; sky-matter
being the middle term of the series of transformations.

Instead of sulphurous acid, we might choose a
dozen other substances, and produce the same effect
with all of them. In the case of some — probably in
the case of all — it is possible to preserve matter in the
firmamental condition for fifteen or twenty minutes
under the continual operation of the light. During
these fifteen or twenty minutes the particles constantly
grow larger, without ever exceeding the size requisite
to the production of the celestial blue. Now when two
vessels are placed before us, each containing sky-matter,
it is possible to state with great distinctness which vessel
contains the largest particles. The eye is very sensi-
tive to differences of light, when, as in our experiments,
it is placed in comparative darkness, and the wave-
motion thrown against the retina is small. The larger
particles declare themselves by the greater whiteness
of their scattered light. Call now to mind the obser-

122

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

vation, or effort at observation, made by our President,
when be failed to distinguish the particles of mastic in
Briicke’s medium, and when you have done this, please
follow me. A beam of light is permitted to act upon
a certain vapour. In two minutes the azure appears,
but at the end of fifteen minutes it has not ceased to
be azure. After fifteen minutes its colour, and some
other phenomena, pronounce it to be a blue of dis-
tinctly smaller particles than those sought for in vain
by Mr. Huxley. These particles, as already stated,
must have been less than T 0 010 Q 0tb of an inch in dia-
meter. And now I want you to consider the following
question : Here are particles which have been growing
continually for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that
time are demonstrably smaller than those which defied
the microscope of Mr. Huxley — What must * have been
the size of these particles at the beginning of their
growth ? What notion can you form of the magnitude
of such particles ? The distances of stellar space give
us simply a bewildering sense of vastness, without
leaving any distinct impression on the mind ; and the
magnitudes with which we have here to do, bewilder
us equally in the opposite direction. We are dealing
with infinitesimals, compared with which the test
objects of the microscope are literally immense.

From their perviousness to stellar light, and other
considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling
conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets.
You know that these extraordinary and mysterious
bodies sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 miles in
length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of
our earth is 8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a
good portion of space beyond the sky, would certainly
be included in a sphere 10,000 miles across. Let us
fill a hollow sphere of this diameter with cometary

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

123

matter, and make it our unit of measure. To produce a
comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about 300,000
such measures would have to be emptied into space.
Now suppose the whole of this stuff to be swept toge-
ther, and suitably compressed, what do you suppose its
volume would be ? Sir John Herschel would probably
tell you that the whole mass might be carted away, at a
single effort, by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I do
not know that he would require more than a small
fraction of a horse-power to remove the cometary dust.
After this, you will hardly regard as monstrous a notion
I have sometimes entertained, concerning the quantity
of matter in our sky. Suppose a shell to surround the
earth at a distance which would place it beyond the
grosser matter that hangs in the lower regions of the
air — say at the height of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc.
Outside this shell we should have the deep blue firma-
ment. Let the atmospheric space beyond the shell be
swept clean, and the sky-matter properly gathered up.
What would be its probable amount ? 1 have some-

times thought that a lady’s portmanteau would contain
it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s portman-
teau— possibly his snuff-box — might take it in. And,
whether the actual sky be capable of this amount of
condensation or not, I entertain no doubt that a sky
quite as vast as ours, and astgood in appearance, could
be formed from a quantity of matter which might be
held in the hollow of the hand.

Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of
the particles of our sky may be inferred from the con-
tinuity of its light. It is not in broken patches, nor
at scattered points, that the heavenly azure is revealed.
To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc, the blue
is as uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface
of the most close-grained solid. A marble dome

124

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

would not exhibit a stricter continuity. And Mr.
Glaisher will inform you, that if our hypothetical shell
were lifted to twice the height of Mont Blanc above
the earth’s surface, we should still have the azure over-
head. Everywhere through the atmosphere those
sky-particles are strewn. They fill the Alpine valleys,
spreading like a delicate gauze in front of the slopes of
pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with light
as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen
the Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air. By
proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky-par-
ticles against the retina may be quenched, and then the
mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden de-
finition. 1 Its extinction in front of a dark mountain
resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is
then the light taking possession of the eye, not the
particles acting as opaque bodies, that interferes with
the definition. By day this light quenches the stars ;
even by moonlight it is able to exclude from vision all
stars between the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It
may be likened to a noise, and the feebler stellar radi-
ance to a whisper drowned by the noise.

What is the nature of the particles which shed this
light ? The celebrated De la Rive ascribes the haze of
the Alps in tine weather to floating organic germs.
Now the possible existence of germs in such profusion
has been held up as an absurdity. It has been affirmed
that they would darken the air, and on the assumed
impossibility of their existence in the requisite numbers,
without invasion of the solar light, an apparently
powerful argument has been based by believers in
spontaneous generation. Similar arguments have been
used by the opponents of the germ theory of epidemic
disease, who have triumphantly challenged an appeal to
1 See the ‘ Sky of the AIjds,’ Art. iv. sec. 3, vol. i.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 125

the microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the
question. Such arguments, however, are founded on
a defective acquaintance with the powers and properties
of matter. Without committing myself in the least to
De la Rive’s notion, to the doctrine of spontaneous
generation, or to the germ theory of disease, I would
simply draw attention to the demonstrable fact, that,
in the atmosphere, we have particles which defy both
the microscope and the balance, which do not darken
the air, and which exist, nevertheless, in multitudes
sufficient to reduce to insignificance the Israelitish
hyperbole regarding the sands upon the sea-shore.

The varying judgments of men on these and other
questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted
for by that doctrine of Relativity which plays so impor-
tant a part in philosophy. This doctrine affirms that
the impressions made upon us by any circumstance,
or combination of circumstances, depend upon our
previous state. Two travellers upon the same height,
the one having ascended to it from the plain, the other
having descended to it from a higher elevation, will be
differently affected by the scene around them. To the
one nature is expanding, to the other it is contracting,
and impressions which have two such different antece-
dent states are sure to differ. In our scientific judg-
ments the law of relativity may also play an important
part. To two men, one educated in the school of the
senses, having mainly occupied himself with observa-
tion ; the other educated in the school of imagination
as well, and exercised in the conceptions of atoms and
molecules to which we have so frequently referred, a
bit of matter, say ^th of an inch in diameter, will
present itself differently. The one descends to it from
his molar heights, the other climbs to it from his mole-

126

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

cular lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the
other large. So, also, as regards the appreciation ot
the most minute forms of life revealed by the micro-
scope. To one of the men these naturally appear con-
terminous with the ultimate particles of matter ; there
is but a step from the atom to the organism. The
other discerns numberless organic gradations between
both. Compared with his atoms, the smallest vibrios
and bacteria of the microscopic field are as behemoth
and leviathan. The law of relativity may to some ex-
tent explain the different attitudes of two such persons
wTith regard to the question of spontaneous generation.
An amount of evidence which satisfies the one entirely
fails to satisfy the other ; and while to the one the last
bold defence and startling expansion of the doctrine by
Dr. Bastian will appear perfectly conclusive, to the
other it will present itself as merely imposing a labour
of demolition on subsequent investigators. 1

Let me say here that many of our physiological
observers appear to form a very inadequate estimate of
the distance which separates the microscopic from the
molecular limit, and that, as a consequence, they some-
times employ a phraseology calculated to mislead.
When, for example, the contents of a cell are described
as perfectly homogeneous or as absolutely structureless,
because the microscope fails to discover any structure ;
or when two structures are pronounced to be without
difference, because the microscope can discover none,
then, I think the microscope begins to play a mis-
chievous part. A little consideration will make it plain
that the microscope can have no voice in the question
of germ structure. Distilled water is more peifectly
homogeneous than any possible organic germ. ^ hat

1 When these words were uttered I did not imagine that the
chief labour of demolition would fall upon myself. 1878.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 127

is it that causes the liquid to cease contracting at 39°
Fahr., and to expand until it freezes ? We have here a
structural process of which the microscope cau take no
note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceivable exten-
sion of its powers. Place distilled water in the field of
an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear upon
it. Will any change be observed when the magnet is
excited? Absolutely none; and still profound and
complex changes have occurred. First of all, the par-
ticles of water have been rendered diamagnetically
polar ; and secondly, in virtue of the structure im-
pressed upon it by the magnetic whirl of its molecules,
the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion perfectly
determinate both as to quantity and direction.

Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the countless
other crystals formed in the laboratories of nature and
of man no structure ? Assuredly they have ; but what
can the microscope make of it ? Nothing. It cannot
be too distinctly borne in mind that between the micro-
scopic limit, and the true molecular limit, there is room
for infinite permutations and combinations. It is in
this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged,
that tendency is given to their powers ; so that when
these poles and powers have free action, proper stimulus,
and a suitable environment, they determine, first the
germ, and afterwards the complete organism. This first
marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent
action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the
microscope. When duly pondered, the complexity of the
problem raises the doubt, not of the power of our instru-
ment, for that is nil, but whether we ourselves possess
the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to
grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.1

1 ‘In using the expression “one sort of living substance” I must
guard against being supposed to mean that any kind of living

128

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn
heavily upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He
has drawn heavily upon time in his development of
species, and he has drawn adventurously upon matter in
his theory of pangenesis. According to this theory, a
germ, already microscopic, is a world of minor germs.
Not only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the
germ, but every organ of the organism has there its
special seed. This, I say, is an adventurous draft on
the power of matter to divide itself and distribute its
forces. But, unless we are perfectly sure that he is
overstepping the bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly
sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law — for
a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly
against either fact or law — we ought, I think, to be
cautious in limiting his intellectual horizon. If there
be the least doubt in the matter, it ought to be given
in favour of the freedom of such a mind. To it a vast
possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the pos-
sibility may never be drawn upon. It gives me plea-
sure to think that the facts and reasonings of this
discourse tend rather towards the justification of Mr.
Darwin, than towards his condemnation ; for they seem
to show the perfect competence of matter and force, as
regards divisibility and distribution, to bear the heaviest
strain that he has hitherto imposed upon them.

In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination,
and reason combined have run back with wonderful
sagacity and success over a certain length of the line

protoplasm is homogeneous. Hyaline though it may appear, we are
not at present able to assign any limit to its complexity of struc-
ture.’—Burdon Sanderson, in the ‘British Medical Journal,’ January
16, 1875.

We have here scientific insight, and its correlative caution. In
fact Dr. Sanderson’s important researches are a continued illus-
tration of the position laid down above.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

129

of biological succession. Guided by analogy, in his
4 Origin of Species r he placed at the root of life a
primordial germ, from which he conceived the amazing
variety of the organisms now upon the earth’s surface
might be deduced. If this hypothesis were even true,
it would not be final. The human mind would in-
fallibly look behind the germ, and however hopeless the
attempt, would enquire into the history of its genesis.
In this dim twilight of conjecture the searcher welcomes
every gleam, and seeks to augment his light by indirect
incidences. He studies the methods of nature in the
ages and the worlds within his reach, in order to shape
the course of speculation in antecedent ages and
worlds. And though the certainty possessed by experi-
mental enquiry is here shut out, we are not left entirely
without guidance. From the examination of the solar
system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its
various bodies once formed parts of the same undislo-
cated mass ; that matter in a nebulous form preceded
matter in its present form ; that as the ages rolled away,
heat was wasted, condensation followed, planets were
detached ; and that finally the chief portion of the hot
cloud reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and
density of our sun. The earth itself offers evidence of a
fiery origin ; and in our day the hypothesis of Kant and
Laplace receives the independent countenance of spec-
trum analysis, which proves the same substances to be
common to the earth and sun.

Accepting some such view of the construction of our
system as probable, a desire immediately arises to con-
nect the present life of our planet with the past. We
wish to know something of our remotest ancestry. On
its first detachment from the central mass, life, as we
understand it, could not have been present on the earth.
How, then, did it come there ? The thing to be encou-

YOL. II. K

130

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

raged here is a reverent freedom — a freedom preceded
hy the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in
speculation — while the thing to he repressed, both in
science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am
in the hands of the meeting — willing to end, hut ready
to go on. I have no right to intrude upon you, un-
asked, the unformed notions which are floating like
clouds, or gathering to more solid consistency, in the
modern speculative scientific mind. But if you wish
me to speak plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I
am willing to do so. On the present occasion —

You are ordained to call, and I to come.

Well, your answer is given, and I obey your call.

Two or three years ago, in an ancient London
College, I listened to a discussion at the end of a lec-
ture by a very remarkable man. Three or four hundred
clergymen were present at the lecture. The orator
began with the civilisation of Egypt in the time of
Joseph ; pointing out the very perfect organisation of
the kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one of
which Joseph rode, as proving a long antecedent period
of civilisation. He then passed on to the mud of the
Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present thickness,
and the remains of human handiwork found therein ;
thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and
which teem with organic remains. Thus in his own
clear way he caused the idea of the world’s age to ex-
pand itself indefinitely before the minds of his audience,
and he contrasted this with the age usually assigned to
the world. During his discourse he seemed to be swim-
ming against a stream, he manifestly thought that he
was opposing a general conviction. He expected resist-
ance in the subsequent discussion ; so did I. But it
was all a mistake ; there was no adverse current, no

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 131

opposing conviction, no resistance; merely here and
there a half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to en-
tangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all
that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth
and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long
ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst
them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this
large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be
ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had en-
tirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported
the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant
past.

This leads us to the gist of our present enquiry,
which is this : Does life belong to what we call matter,
or is it an independent principle inserted into matter
at some suitable epoch — say when the physical condi-
tions became such as to permit of the development of
life ? Let us put the question with the reverence due
to a faith and culture in which we all were cradled, and
which are the undeniable historic antecedents of our
present enlightenment. I say, let us put the question
reverently, but let us also put it clearly and definitely.
There are the strongest grounds for believing that
during a certain period of its history the earth was not,
nor was it fit to be, the theatre of life. Whether this
was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period,
does not signify much; and if we revert to the nebulous
condition, it is because the probabilities are really on
its side. Our question is this : Did creative energy
pause until the nebulous matter had condensed, until
the earth had been detached, until the solar fire had so
far withdrawn from the earth’s vicinity as to permit a
crust to gather round the planet ? Did it wait until
the air was isolated ; until the seas were formed ; until
evaporation, condensation, and the descent of rain had

132

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

begun ; until the eroding forces of the atmosphere had
weathered and decomposed the molten rocks so as to
form soils ; until the sun’s rays had become so tempered
by distance, and by waste, as to be chemically fit for
the decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having
waited through these aeons until the proper conditions
had set in, did it send the fiat forth, ‘ Let there be
Life ! ’ ? These questions define a hypothesis not with-
out its difficulties, but the dignity of which in relation
to the world’s knowledge was demonstrated by the
nobleness of the men whom it sustained.

Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide
between this hypothesis and another ; and public
thought generally will afterwards be called upon to do
the same. But, however the convictions of individuals
here and there may be influenced, the process must be
slow and secular which commends the hypothesis of
Natural Evolution to the public mind. For what are
the core and essence of this hypothesis ? Strip it
naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that
not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or
animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse
and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful
mechanism of the human body, but that the human
mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, and all their
phenomena — were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely
the mere statement of such a notion is more than a
refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go
even farther than this. Many who hold it would
probably assent to the position that, at the present
moment, all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our
science, and all our art — Plato, Shakspeare, Newton,
and Raphael — are potential in the fires of the sun.
We long to learn something of our origin. If the
Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 133

yearning must have come to us across the ages which
separate the primeval mist from the consciousness of
to-day. I do not think that any holder of the Evolution
hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain it in
any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring
before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by
which it must stand or fall.

Surely these notions represent an absurdity too
monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind. But
why are such notions absurd, and why should sanity
reject them ? The law of Relativity, of which we have
previously spoken, may find its application here. These
Evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only
for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas con-
cerning matter which were drilled into us when young.
Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in
the rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the other
as all-vile. But is this correct ? Upon the answer to
this question all depends. Supposing that, instead of
having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and matter
presented to our youthful minds, we had been taught to
regard them as equally worthy, and equally wonderful ;
to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of the
self-same mystery. Supposing that in youth we had been
impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe, instead
of the notion of the poet Young, and taught to look
upon matter, not as ‘ brute matter,’ but as the 4 living
garment of God ; ’ do you not think that under these
altered circumstances the law of Relativity might have
had an outcome different from its present one ? Is it
not probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval
union between spirit and matter might be considerably
abated ? Without this total revolution of the notions
now prevalent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand
condemned ; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds

134

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

such a revolution has already taken place. They de-
grade neither member of the mysterious duality re-
ferred to ; hut they exalt one of them from its abase-
ment, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between
them. In substance, if not in words, their position as
regards the relation of spirit and matter is : ‘ What God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’

You have been thus led to the outer rim of specula-
tive science, for beyond the nebulae scientific thought
has never hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that
which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken.
I neither think this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted
away contemptuously, nor that it ought to be denounced
as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of dis-
ciplined reason, and there justified or condemned. Let
us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to those
who wisely oppose it ; and let us tolerate those, whose
name is legion, who try foolishly to do either of these
things. The only thing out of place in the discussion
is dogmatism on either side. Fear not the Evolution
hypothesis. Steady yourselves, in its presence, upon
that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was
expressed by old Gamaliel when he said : ‘ If it be of
God, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will
come to nought.’ Under the fierce light of scientific
enquiry, it is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a
core of truth. Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis
is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of
all those virtues to which the term ‘ Christian ’ has
been applied. It does not solve — it does not profess
to solve — the ultimate mystery of this universe. It
leaves, in fact, that mystery untouched. For, granting
the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence
they came, would still remain to baffle and bewilder us.
At bottom, the hypothesis does nothing more than

SCIENTIFIC USE OF TIIE IMAGINATION. 135

« transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefi-
nitely distant past.’

Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no
means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and
they only yield to it a provisional assent. They regard
the nebular hypothesis as probable, and, in the utter
'absence of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they
extend the method of nature from the present into the
past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their
only guide. Within the long range of physical enquiry,
they have never discerned in nature the insertion of
caprice. Throughout this range, the laws of physical
and intellectual continuity have run side by side.
Having thus determined the elements of their curve in
a world of observation and experiment, they prolong
that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as-
probable the unbroken sequence of development from
the nebula to the present time. You never hear the
really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of Uni-
formity speaking of impossibilities in nature. They
never say, what they are constantly charged with
saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the
universe to alter His work. Their business is not with
the possible, but the actual — not with a world which
might be, but with a world that is. Tms they explore
with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and
according to methods which, like the quality of a tree,
are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire
— to know the truth. They have but one fear — to
believe a lie. And if they know the strength of science,
and rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know
the limits beyond which science ceases to be strong.
They best know that questions offer themselves to
thought, which science, as now prosecuted, has not even
the tendency to solve. They have as little fellowship

136

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

with the atheist who says there is no God, as with the
theist who professes to know the mind of God. ‘ Two
things,’ said Immanuel Kant, ‘ fill me with awe : the
starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in
man.’ And in his hours of health and strength and
sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and the
pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator
finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking
contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates
him with a Power which gives fulness and tone to his
existence, hut which he can neither analyse nor com-
prehend.

137

There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals.
Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature ;

But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten.
With human sensations and voice and corporeal members ;

So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man s fashion,
And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead,
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.

N impulse inherent in primeval man turned his

thoughts and questionings betimes towards the
sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse,
inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action
to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction
from experience we form physical theories which lie
beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the
desire of the mind to see every natural occurrence
resting upon a cause. In forming their notions of the
origin of things, our earliest historic (and doubtless,
we might add, our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as
far as their intelligence permitted, the same course.
They also fell back upon experience ; but with this

1 Delivered before the British Association on Wednesday evening,
August 19, 1874.

Xenophanes of Colophon (six centuries b.c.).
Supernatural Religion, vol. i. p. 76.

IX.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.1

§ I-

138

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

difference — that the particular experiences which fur-
nished the warp and woof of their theories were drawn,
not from the study of nature, but from what lay much
closer to them — the observation of men. Their theories
accordingly took an anthropomorphic form. To super-
sensual beings, which, ‘however potent and invisible,
were nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps
raised from among mankind, and retaining all human
passions and appetites,’ 1 were handed over the rule
and governance of natural phenomena.

Tested by observation and reflection, these early
notions failed in the long run to satisfy the more pene-
trating intellects of our race. Far in the depths of his-
tory we find men of exceptional power differentiating
themselves from the crowd, rejecting these anthropo-
morphic notions, and seeking to connect natural pheno-
mena with their physical principles. But, long prior
to these purer efforts of the understanding, the merchant
had been abroad, and rendered the philosopher possible ;
commerce had been developed, wealth amassed, leisure
for travel and speculation secured, while races educated
under different conditions, and therefore differently in-
formed and endowed, had been stimulated and sharpened
by mutual contact. In those regions where the com-
mercial aristocracy of ancient Gfreece mingled with
their eastern neighbours, the sciences were born, being
nurtured and developed by free-thinking and coura-
geous men. The state of things to be displaced may
be gathered from a passage of Euripides quoted by
Hume. ‘ There is nothing in the world ; no glory, no
prosperity. The gods toss all into confusion ; mix
everything with its reverse, • that all of us, from our
ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more
worship and reverence.’ Now as science demands the

1 Hume, ‘ Natural History of Religion.’

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

139

radical extirpation of caprice, and tlie absolute reliance
upon law in nature, there grew, with the growth of
scientific notions, a desire and determination to sweep
from the field of theory this mob of gods and demons,
and to place natural phenomena on a basis more con-
gruent with themselves.

The problem which had been previously approached
from above, was now attacked from below ; theoretic
effort passed from the super- to the sub-sensible. It
was felt that to construct the universe in idea, it was
necessary to have some notion of its constituent parts
— of what Lucretius subsequently called the 4 First
Beginnings.’ Abstracting again from experience, the
leaders of scientific speculation reached at length the
pregnant doctrine of atoms and molecules, the latest
developments of which were set forth with such power
and clearness at the last meeting of the British Associa-
tion. Thought, no doubt, had long hovered about this
doctrine before it attained the precision and complete-
ness which it assumed in the mind of Democritus,1 a
philosopher who may well for a moment arrest our
attention. 4 Few great men,’ says Lange, a non-
materialist, in his excellent ‘History of Materialism,’
to the spirit and to the letter of which I am equally
indebted, 4 have been so despitefully used by history as
Democritus. In the distorted images sent down to us
through unscientific traditions, there remains of him
almost nothing but the name of 44 the laughing philoso-
pher,” while figures of immeasurably smaller significance
spread themselves out at full length before us.’ Lange
speaks of Bacon’s high appreciation of Democritus — for
ample illustrations of which lam indebted to my excellent
friend Mr. Spedding, the learned editor and biographer
of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon considered

1 Born 460 B.c.

140

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Democritus to be a man of weightier metal than either
Plato or Aristotle, though their philosophy ‘was noised
and celebrated in the schools, amid the din and pomp
of professors. It was not they, but Gfenseric and
Attila and the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic
philosophy. ‘lor, at a time when all human learning
had suffered shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and
Platonic philosophy, as being of a lighter and more
inflated substance, were preserved and came down to
us, while things more solid sank and almost passed into
oblivion.’

The son of a wealthy father, Democritus devoted
the whole of his inherited fortune to the culture of his
mind. He travelled everywhere ; visited Athens when
Socrates and Plato were there, but quitted the city
without making himself known. Indeed, the dialectic
strife in which Socrates so much delighted, bad no
charm for Democritus, who held that ‘ the man who
readily contradicts, and uses many words, is unfit to
learn anything truly right.’ He is said to have dis-
covered and educated Protagoras the Sophist, being
struck as much by the manner in which he, being a
hewer of wood, tied up his faggots, as by the sagacity
of his conversation. Democritus returned poor from
his travels, was supported by his brother, and at length
wrote his great work entitled ‘ Diakosmos,’ which he
read publicly before the people of his native town. He
was honoured by his countrymen in various ways, and
died serenely at a great age.

The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his
uncompromising antagonism to those who deduced the
phenomena of nature from the caprices of the gods.
They are briefly these : 1. From nothing comes nothing.
Nothing that exists can be destroyed. All changes are
due to the combination and separation of molecules.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

141

2. Nothing- happens by chance; every occurrence has
its cause, from which it follows by necessity. 3. The
only existing things are the atoms and empty space ;
all else is mere opinion. 4. The atoms are infinite in
number and infinitely various in form; they strike
together, and the lateral motions and whirlings which
thus arise are the beginnings of worlds. 5. The
varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their
atoms, in number, size, and aggregation. 6. The soul
consists of fine, smooth, round atoms, like those of fire.
These are the most mobile of all : they interpenetrate
the whole body, and in their motions the phenomena of
life arise.

The first five propositions are a fair general state-
ment of the atomic philosophy, as now held. As regards
the sixth, Democritus made his finer atoms do duty for
the nervous system, whose functions were then unknown.
The atoms of Democritus are individually without
sensation ; they combine in obedience to mechanical
laws ; and not only organic forms, but the phenomena
of sensation and thought, are the result of their com-
bination.

That great enigma, 4 the exquisite adaptation of one
part of an organism to another part, and to the condi-
tions of life,’ more especially the construction of the
human body, Democritus made no attempt to solve.
Empedocles, a man of more fiery and poetic nature, in-
troduced the notion of love and hate among the atoms,
to account for their combination and separation ; and
bolder than Democritus, he struck in with the pene-.
trating thought, linked, however, with some wild
speculation, that it lay in the very nature of those
combinations which were suited to their ends (in other
words, in harmony with their environment) to maintain
themselves, while unfit combinations, having no proper

142

fragments of science.

habitat, mast rapidly disappear. Thus, more than
2,000 years ago, the doctrine of the ‘ survival of the
fittest,’ which in our day, not on the basis of vague
conjecture, but of positive knowledge, has been raised
to such extraordinary significance, had received at all
events partial enunciation. 1

Epicurus,2 said to be the son of a poor schoolmaster
at Samos, is the next dominant figure in the history of
the atomic philosophy. He mastered the writings of
Democritus, heard lectures in Athens, went back to
Samos, and subsequently wandered through various
countries. He finally returned to Athens, where he
bought a garden, and surrounded himself by pupils, in
the midst of whom he lived a pure and serene life,
and died a peaceful death. Democritus looked to the
soul as the ennobling part of man ; even beauty, with-
out understanding, partook of animalism. Epicurus
also rated the spirit above the body ; the pleasure of
the body being that of the moment, while the spirit
could draw upon the future and the past. His philo-
sophy was almost identical with that of Democritus ;
but he never quoted either friend or foe. One main
object of Epicurus was to free the world from supersti-
tion and the fear of death. Death he treated with
indifference. It merely robs us of sensation. As long
as we are, death is not ; and when death is, we are not.
Life has no more evil for him who has made up his
mind that it is no evil not to live. He adored the
gods, but not in the ordinary fashion. The idea of
Divine power, properly purified, he thought an elevating
one Still he taught, 4 Not he is godless who rejects
the gods of the crowd, but rather he who accepts them.’
The gods were to him eternal and immortal beings,
whose blessedness excluded every thought of care or

1 See ‘ Lange,’ 2nd edit., p. 23. 2 Born 342 B.c.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

143

occupation of any kind. Nature pursues her course
in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never in-
terfering. They liaunt

The lucid interspace of world and world
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,

Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,

Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,

Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm.1

Lange considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods
subjective ; the indication, probably, of an ethical re-
quirement of his own nature. We cannot read history
with open eyes, or study human nature to its depths,
and fail to discern such a requirement. Man never has
been, and he never will be, satisfied with the operations
and products of the Understanding alone ; hence physi-
cal science cannot cover all the demands of his nature.
But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these
demands might be broadly described as a history of
errors — the error, in great part, consisting in ascribing
fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary,
being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our
capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one
great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He
neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any per-
sonal profit from his relation to the gods. And it is
assuredly a fact, that loftiness and serenity of thought
may be promoted by conceptions which involve no idea
of profit of this kind. ‘ Did I not believe,’ said a great
man2 to me once, ‘ that an Intelligence is at the heart
of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.’ The
utterer of these words is not, in my opinion, rendered
less but more noble by the fact, that it was the need of

’ Tennyson’s ‘ Lucretius.’ 2 Carlyle.

144

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ethical harmony here, and not the thought of personal
happiness hereafter, that prompted his observation.

There are persons, not belonging to the highest
intellectual zone, nor yet to the lowest, to whom perfect
clearness of exposition suggests want of depth. They
find comfort and edification in an abstract and learned
phraseology. To such people Epicurus, who spared no
pains to rid his style of every trace of haze and turbidity,
appeared, on this very account, superficial. He had,
however, a disciple who 'thought it no unworthy occu-
pation to spend his days and nights in the effort to
reach the clearness of his master, and to whom the
Greek philosopher is mainly indebted for the extension
and perpetuation of his fame. Some two centuries
after the death of Epicurus, Lucretius 1 wrote his great
poem, c On the Nature of Things,’ in which he, a
Roman, developed with extraordinary ardour the philo-
sophy of his Greek predecessor. He wishes to win over
his friend Memnius to the school of Epicurus ; and
although he has no rewards in a future life to offer,
although his object appears to be a purely negative one,
he addresses his friend with the heat of an apostle. His
object, like that of his great forerunner, is the destruc-
tion of superstition ; and considering that men in his
day trembled before every natural event as a direct
monition from the gods, and that everlasting torture
was also in prospect, the freedom aimed at by Lucretius
might be deemed a positive good. ‘ This terror,’ he
says, ‘ and darkness of mind, must be dispelled, not by
the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by
the aspect and the law of nature.’ He refutes the
notion that anything can come out of nothing-, or that
what is once begotten can be recalled to nothing. The
first beginnings, the atoms, are indestructible, and into

1 Born 99 B.C.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

145

them all things can be resolved at last. Bodies are
partly atoms and partly combinations of atoms ; but
the atoms nothing can quench. They are strong in
solid singleness, and, by their denser combination, all
things can be closely packed and exhibit enduring
strength. He denies that matter is infinitely divisible.
We come at length to the atoms, without which, as an
imperishable substratum, all order in the generation
and development of things would be destroyed.

The mechanical shock of the atoms being, in his
view, the all-sufficient cause of things, he combats the
notion that the constitution of nature has been in any
way determined by intelligent design. The interaction
of the atoms throughout infinite time rendered all man-
ner of combinations possible. Of these, the fit one3
persisted, while the unfit ones disappeared. Not after
sage deliberation did the atoms station themselves in
their right places, nor did they bargain what motions
they should assume. From all eternity they have been
driven together, and, after trying motions and unions of
every kind, they fell at length into the arrangements
out of which this system of things has been evolved.
4 If you will apprehend and keep in mind these things,
Nature, free at once, and rid of her haughty lords, is
seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without
the meddling of the gods.’ 1

To meet the objection that his atoms cannot be
seen, Lucretius describes a violent storm, and shows
that the invisible particles of air act in the same way
as the visible particles of water. We perceive, more-
over, the different smells of things, yet never see them

1 Monro’s translation. In his criticism of this work (< Contem-
porary Review,’ 1867) Dr. Dayman does not appear to be aware of
the really sound and subtile observations on which the reasoning of
Lucretius, though erroneous, sometimes rests.

VOL. II. L

14G

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

coming- to our nostrils. Again, clothes hung up on a
shore which waves break upon, become moist, and then
get dry if spread out in the sun, though no eye can see
either the approach or the escape of the water-particles.
A ring, worn long on the finger, becomes thinner ; a
water-drop hollows out a stone ; the ploughshare is
rubbed away in the field ; the street-pavement is worn
by the feet ; but the particles that disappear at any
moment we cannot see. Nature acts through invisible
particles. That Lucretius had a strong scientific ima-
gination the foregoing references prove. A fine illustra-
tion of his power in this respect, is his explanation of the
apparent rest of bodies whose atoms are in motion. He
employs the image of a flock of sheep with skipping
lambs, which, seen from a distance, presents simply a
white patch upon the green hill, the jumping of the indi-
vidual lambs being quite invisible.

His vaguely grand conception of the atoms falling
eternally through space, suggested the nebular hypo-
thesis to Kant, its first propounder. Far beyond the
limits of our visible world are to be found atoms innu-
merable, which have never been united to form bodies,
or which, if once united, have been again dispersed —
falling silently through immeasurable intervals of time
and space. As everywhere throughout the All the same
conditions are repeated, so must the phenomena be
repeated also. Above us, below us, beside us, therefore,
are worlds without end ; and this, when considered,
must dissipate every thought of a deflection of the uni-
verse by the gods. The worlds come and go, attracting
new atoms out of limitless space, or dispersing their
own particles. The reputed death of Lucretius, which
forms the basis of Mr. Tennyson’s noble poem, is in
strict accordance with his philosophy, which was severe
and pure.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

147

Still earlier than these three philosophers, and
during- the centuries between the first of them and the
last, the human intellect was active in other fields than
theirs. Pythagoras had founded a school of mathe-
matics, and made his experiments on the harmonic
intervals. The Sophists had run through their career.
At Athens had appeared Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
who ruined the Sophists, and whose yoke remains to
some extent unbroken to the present hour. Within
this period also the School of Alexandria was founded,
Euclid wrote his 4 Elements ’ and made some advance in
optics. Archimedes had propounded the theory of the
lever, and the principles of hydrostatics. Astronomy was
immensely enriched by the discoveries of Hipparchus,
who was followed by the historically more celebrated
Ptolemy. Anatomy had been made the basis of scien-
tific medicine ; and it is said by Draper 1 that vivisec-
tion had begun. In fact, the science of ancient Greece
had already cleared the world of the fantastic images
of divinities operating capriciously through natural
phenomena. It had shaken itself free from that fruitless
scrutiny 4 by the internal light of the mind alone,’
which had vainly sought to transcend experience, and
to reach a knowledge of ultimate causes. Instead of
accidental observation, it had introduced observation with
a purpose ; instruments were employed to aid the
senses ; and scientific method was rendered in a great
measure complete by the union of Induction and Ex-
periment.

What, then, stopped its victorious advance ? Why
was the scientific intellect compelled, like an exhausted

1 ‘ History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,’ p. 295.

148

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millenniums, before it
could regather the elements necessary to its fertility
and strength ? Bacon has already let us know one
cause ; Whewell ascribes this stationary period to four
causes — obscurity of thought, servility, intolerance of
disposition, enthusiasm of temper; and he gives striking
examples of each.1 But these characteristics must have
had their antecedents in the circumstances of the time.
Rome, and the other cities of the Empire, had fallen
into moral putrefaction. Christianity had appeared,
offering the Gospel to the poor, and by moderation, if
not asceticism of life, practically protesting against the
profligacy of the age. The sufferings of the early
Christians, and the extraordinary exaltation of mind
which enabled them to triumph over the diabolical tor-
tures to which they were subjected,2 must have left traces
not easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in view of
that ‘ building of God, that house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.’ The Scriptures which minis-
tered to their spiritual needs were also the measure of
their Science. When, for example, the celebrated ques-
tion of Antipodes came to be discussed, the Bible was
with many the ultimate court of appeal. Augustine, who
flourished a.d. 400, would not deny the rotundity of the
earth ; but he would deny the possible existence of in-
habitants at the other side, 4 because no such race is
recorded in Scripture among the descendants of Adam.’
Archbishop Boniface was shocked at the assumption of
a ‘ world of human beings out of the reach of the means
of salvation.’ Thus reined in, Science was not likely
to make much progress. Later on, the political and
theological strife between the Church and civil govern-

1 ‘History of the Inductive Sciences,’ vol. i.

2 Described with terrible vividness in Renan’s ‘Antichrist.’

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

149

ments, so powerfully depicted by Draper, must have
done much to stifle investigation.

Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks re-
garding the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial
spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge had for-
saken the fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to
nature by observation and experiment, and given them-
selves up to the remanipulation of the notions of their
predecessors. It was a time when thought had become
abject, and when the acceptance of mere authority led,
as it always does in science, to intellectual death.
Natural events, instead of being traced to physical,
were referred to moral, causes ; while an exercise of
the phantasy, almost as degrading as the spiritualism of
the present day, took the place of scientific speculation.
Then came the mysticism of the Middle Ages, Magic,
Alchemy, the Neoplatonic philosophy, with its visionary
though sublime abstractions, which caused men to look
with shame upon their own bodies, as hindrances to the
absorption of the creature in the blessedness of the
Creator. Finally came the scholastic philosophy, a
fusion, according to Lange, of the least mature notions
of Aristotle with the Christianity of the West. Intel-
lectual immobility was the result. As a traveller with-
out a compass in a fog may wander long, imagining he is
making way, and find himself after hours of toil at his
starting-point, so the schoolmen, having ‘ tied and
untied the same knots, and formed and dissipated the
same clouds,’ 1 found themselves at the end of centuries
in their old position.

With regard to the influence wielded by Aristotle
in the Middle Ages, and which, to a less extent, he still
wields, I would ask permission to make one remark.

1 Whewell.

150

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

When the human mind has achieved greatness and
given evidence of extraordinary power in one domain,
there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in
all other domains. Thus theologians have found com-
fort and assurance in the thought that Newton dealt
with the question of revelation — forgetful of the fact
that the very devotion of his powers, through all the
best years of his life, to a totally different class of ideas,
not to speak of any natural disqualification, tended to
render him less, instead of more competent to deal with
theological and historic questions. Goethe, starting from
his established greatness as a poet, and indeed from his
positive discoveries in Natural History, produced a pro-
found impression among the painters of Germany, when
he published his ‘ Farbenlehre,’ in which he endeavoured
to overthrow Newton’s theory of colours. This theory
he deemed so obviously absurd, that he considered its
author a charlatan, and attacked him with a corre-
sponding vehemence of language. In the domain of
Natural History, Goethe had made really considerable
discoveries ; and we have high authority for assuming
that, had he devoted himself wholly to that side of
science, he might have reached an eminence comparable
with that which he attained as a poet. In sharpness
of observation, in the detection of analogies apparently
remote, in the classification and organisation of facts
according to the analogies discerned, Goethe possessed
extraordinary powers. These elements of scientific
enquiry fall in with the disciplines of the poet. But,
on the other hand, a mind thus richly endowed in the
direction of natural history, may be almost shorn of
endowment as regards the physicial and mechanical
sciences. Goethe was in this condition. He could not
formulate distinct mechanical conceptions ; he could
not see the force of mechanical reasoning ; and, in

THE BELFAST ADDKESS.

151

regions where such reasoning reigns supreme, he became
a mere ignis fat aus to those who followed him.

I have sometimes permitted myself to compare
Aristotle with Goethe — to credit the Stagirite with an
almost superhuman power of amassing and systematising
facts, but to consider him fatally defective on that side
of the mind, in respect to which incompleteness has
been just ascribed to Goethe. Whewell refers the errors
of Aristotle not to a neglect of facts, but to 4 a neglect
of the idea appropriate to the facts ; the idea of
Mechanical cause, which is Force, and the substitution
of vague or inapplicable notions, involving only rela-
tions of space or emotions of wonder.’ This is doubtless
true ; but the word i neglect ’ implies mere intellectual
misdirection, whereas in Aristotle, as in Goethe, it was
not, I believe, misdirection, but sheer natural incapacity
which lay at the root of his mistakes. As a physicist,
Aristotle displayed what we should consider some of the
worst of attributes in a modern physical investigator —
indistinctness of ideas, confusion of mind, and a confi-
dent use of language which led to the delusive notion
that he had really mastered his subject, while he had,
as yet, failed to grasp even the elements of it. He put
words in the place of things, subject in the place of
object. He preached Induction without practising it,
inverting the true order of enquiry, by passing from
the general to the particular, instead of from the par-
ticular to the general. He made of the universe a
closed sphere, in the centre of which he fixed the earth,
proving from general principles, to his own satisfaction
and to that of the world for near 2,000 years, that no
other universe was possible. His notions of motion
were entirely unphysical. It was natural or unnatural,
better or worse, calm or violent— no real mechanical
conception regarding it lying at the bottom of his mind.

152

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

He affirmed that a vacuum could not exist, and proved
that if it did motion in it would he impossible. He
determined a priori how many species of animals must
exist, and showed on general principles why animals
must have such and such parts. When an eminent
contemporary philosopher, who is far removed from
errors of this kind, remembers these abuses of the
a priori method, he will be able to make allowance for
the jealousy of physicists as to the acceptance of so-
called a priori truths. Aristotle’s errors of detail, as
shown by Eucken and Lange, were grave and numerous.
He affirmed that only in man we had the beating of the
heart, that the left side of the body was colder than the
right, that men have more teeth than women, and that
there is an empty space at the back of every man’s head.

There is one essential quality in physical concep-
tions, which was entirely wanting in those of Aristotle
and his followers — a capability of being placed as
coherent pictures before the mind. The Germans
express the act of picturing by the word vorstellen , and
the picture they call a Vorstellung . We have no word
in English which comes nearer to our requirements
than Imagination ; and, taken with its proper limita-
tions, the word answers very well. But it is tainted by
its associations, and therefore objectionable to some
minds. Compare, with reference to this capacity of
mental presentation, the case of the Aristotelian, who
refers the ascent of water in a pump to Nature’s abhor-
rence of a vacuum, with that of Pascal when he proposed
to solve the question of atmospheric pressure by the
ascent of the Puy de Dome. In the one case the terms
of the explanation refuse to fall into place as a physical
image ; in the other the image is distinct, the descent and
rise of the barometer being clearly figured beforehand
as the balancing of two varying and opposing pressures.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

153

§ 3.

During the drought of the Middle Ages in Christen-
dom, the Arabian intellect, as forcibly shown by Draper,
was active. With the intrusion of the Moors into Spain,
order, learning, and refinement took the place of their
opposites. When smitten with disease, the Christian
peasant resorted to a shrine, the Moorish one to an
instructed physician. The Arabs encouraged transla-
tions from the Gfreek philosophers, but not from the
Greek poets. They turned in disgust ‘ from the lewd-
ness of our classical mythology, and denounced as an
unpardonable blasphemy all connection between the
impure Olympian Jove and the Most High God.’
Draper traces still farther than Whewell the Arab
elements in our scientific terms. He gives examples of
what Arabian men of science accomplished, dwelling
particularly on Alhazen, who was the first to correct the
Platonic notion that rays of light are emitted by the
eye. Alhazen discovered atmospheric refraction, and
showed that we see the sun and the moon after they
have set. He explained the enlargement of the sun
and moon, and the shortening of the vertical diameters
of both these bodies when near the horizon. He was
aware that the atmosphere decreases in density with
increase of elevation, and actually fixed its height at
58^- miles. In the 4 Book of the Balance of Wisdom,’
he sets forth the connection between the weight of the
atmosphere and its increasing density. He shows that
a body will weigh differently in a rare and dense atmo-
sphere, and he considers the force with which plunged
bodies rise through heavier media. He understood the
doctrine of the centre of gravity, and applied it to the
investigation of balances and steelyards. He recognised
gravity as a forpe, though he fell into the error of

154

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

assuming it to diminish simply as the distance, and of
making it purely terrestrial. He knew the relation
between the velocities, spaces, and times of falling
bodies, and had distinct ideas of capillary attraction.
He improved the hydrometer. The determinations of
the densities of bodies, as given by Alhazen, approach
very closely to our own. 4 1 join,’ says Draper, ‘in the
pious prayer of Alhazen, that in the day of judgment
the All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of Abur-
Raihan, because he was the first of the race of men to
construct a table of specific gravities.’ If all this be
historic truth (and I have entire confidence in Dr.
Draper), well may he 4 deplore the systematic manner
in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put
out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mahom-
medans.’1

The strain upon the mind during the stationary
period towards ultra-terrestrial things, to the neglect of
problems close at hand, was sure to provoke reaction.
But the reaction was gradual ; for the ground was dan-
gerous, and a power was at hand competent to crush the
critic who went too far. To elude this power, and still
allow opportunity for the expression of opinion, the
doctrine of 4 two-fold truth’ was invented, according to
which an opinion might be held 4 theologically,’ and the
opposite opinion 4 philosophically.’ 2 Thus, in the thir-
teenth century, the creation of the world in six days, and
the unchangeableness of the individual soul, which had
been so distinctly affirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas,
were both denied philosophically, but admitted to be
true as articles of the Catholic faith. When Protagoras
uttered the maxim which brought upon him so much
vituperation, that 4 opposite assertions are equally true,

1 ‘Intellectual Development of Europe,' p. 359.

s ‘Lange,’ 2nd- edit. pp. 181, 182.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

155

he simply meant to affirm men’s differences to be so
great, that what was subjectively true to the one might
be subjectively untrue to the other. The great Sophist
never meant to play fast and loose with the truth by
saying that one of two opposite assertions, made by the
same individual, could possibly escape being a lie. It
was not ‘ sophistry,’ but the dread of theologic ven-
geance, that generated this double dealing with convic-
tion ; and it is astonishing to notice what lengths were
allowed to men who were adroit in the use ot artifices
of this kind.

Towards the close of the stationary period a word-
weariness, if I may so express it, took more and more
possession of men’s minds. Christendom had become
sick of the School Philosophy and its verbal wastes,
which led to no issue, but left the intellect in everlasting
haze. Here and there was heard the voice of one impa-
tiently crying in the wilderness, ‘ Not unto Aristotle, not
unto subtle hypothesis, not unto church, Bible, or blind
tradition, must we turn for a knowledge of the universe,
but to the direct investigation of nature by observation
and experiment.’ In 1543 the epoch-marking work of
Copernicus on the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared.
The total crash of Aristotle’s closed universe, with the
earth at its centre, followed as a consequence, and
‘ The earth moves ! ’ became a kind of watchword among
intellectual freemen. Copernicus was Canon of the
church of Frauenburg in the diocese of Ermeland. For
tliree-and-thirty years he had withdrawn himself from
the world, and devoted himself to the consolidation of
his great scheme of the solar system. He made its
blocks eternal ; and even to those who feared it, and
desired its overthrow, it was so obviously strong, that
they refrained for a time from meddling with it. In
the last year of the life of Copernicus his book appeared :

156

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

it is said that the old man received a copy of it a few
days before his death, and then departed in peace.

The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was one
of the earliest converts to the new astronomy. Taking
Lucretius as his exemplar, he revived the notion of the
infinity of worlds ; and, combining with it the doctrine
of Copernicus, reached the sublime generalisation that
the fixed stars are suns, scattered numberless through
space, and accompanied by satellites, which bear the
same relation to them that our earth does to our sun,
or our moon to our earth. This was an expansion of
transcendent import ; but Bruno came closer than this
to our present line of thought. Struck with the problem
of the generation and maintenance of organisms, and
duly pondering it, he came to the conclusion that
Nature, in her productions, does not imitate the technic
of man. Her process is one of unravelling and unfolding.
The infinity of forms under which matter appears was
not imposed upon it by an external artificer ; by its own
intrinsic force and virtue it brings these forms forth.
Matter is not the mere naked, empty capacity which
philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal
mother, who brings forth all things as the fruit of her
own womb.

This outspoken man was originally a Dominican
monk. He was accused of heresy and had to fly,
seeking refuge in Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany.
In 1592 he fell into the hands of the Inquisition at
Venice. He was imprisoned for many years, tried,
degraded, excommunicated, and handed over to the
Civil power, with the request that lie should be treated
gently, and ‘ without the shedding of blood.’ This
meant that he was to be burnt ; and burnt accordingly
he was, on February 16, 1600. To escape a similar
fate Galileo, thirty-three years afterwards, abjured upon

THE BELFAST ADDBESS.

1r *7

5/

his knees, with his hands upon the holy Gospels, the
heliocentric doctrine, which he knew to be true. After
Galileo came Kepler, who from his German home
defied the ultramontane power. He traced out from
pre-existing observations the laws of planetary motion.
Materials were thus prepared for Newton, who bound
those empirical laws together by the principle of gravi-
tation.

§4.

In the seventeenth century Bacon and Descartes,
the restorers of philosophy, appeared in succession.
Differently educated and endowed, their philosophic
tendencies were different. Bacon held fast to Induction,
believing firmly in the existence of an external world,
and making collected experiences the basis of all know-
ledge. The mathematical studies of Descartes gave
him a bias towards Deduction ; and his fundamental
principle was much the same as that of Protagoras, who
made the individual man the measure of all thino-s. ‘I

O

think, therefore I am,’ said Descartes. Only his own
identity was sure to him ; and the full development of
this system would have led to an idealism, in which the
outer world would have been resolved into a mere phe-
nomenon of consciousness. Gassendi, one of Descartes’s
contemporaries, of whom we shall hear more presently,
quickly pointed out that the fact of personal existence
would be proved as well by reference to any other act,
as to the act of thinking. I eat, therefore I am , or I
love, therefore I am, would be quite as conclusive.
Lichtenberg, indeed, showed that the very thing to be
proved was inevitably postulated in the first two words,
4 1 think ; ’ and it is plain that no inference from the
postulate could, by any possibility, be stronger than the
postulate itself.

158

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

But Descartes deviated strangely from the idealism
implied in his fundamental principle. He was the
first to reduce, in a manner eminently capable of bearing
the test of mental presentation, vital phenomena to
purely mechanical principles. Through fear or love,
Descartes was a good churchman ; he accordingly re-
jected the notion of an atom, because it was absurd to
suppose that Gfod, if He so pleased, could not divide an
atom ; he puts in the place of the atoms small round
particles, and light splinters, out of which he builds the
organism. He sketches with marvellous physical insight
a machine, with water for its motive power, which shall
illustrate vital actions. He has made clear to his mind
that such a machine would be competent to carry on
the processes of digestion, nutrition, growth, respiration,
and the beating of the heart. It would be competent
to accept impressions from the external sense, to store
them up in imagination and memory, to go through the
internal movements of the appetites and passions, and
the external movements of the limbs. He deduces
these functions of his machine from the mere arrange-
ments of its organs, as the movement of a clock, or
other automaton, is deduced from its weights and wheels.

‘ As far as these functions are concerned,’ he says, ‘ it is
not necessary to conceive any other vegetative or sen-
sitive soul, nor any other principle of motion or of life,
than the blood and the spirits agitated by the fire which
burns continually in the heart, and which is in nowise
different from the fires existing in inanimate bodies.’
Had Descartes been acquainted with the steam-engine,
he would have taken it, instead of a fall of water, as
his motive power. He would have shown the perfect
analogy which exists between the oxidation of the food
in the body, and that of the coal in the furnace. He
would assuredly have anticipated Mayer in calling the

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

159

blood which the heart diffuses, ‘ the oil of the lamp of
life,’ deducing all animal motions from the combustion
of this oil, as the motions of a steam-engine are deduced
from the combustion of its coal. As the matter stands,
however, and considering the circumstances of the time,
the boldness, clearness, and precision, with which Des-
cartes grasped the problem of vital dynamics constitute
a marvellous illustration of intellectual power.1

During the Middle Ages the doctrine of atoms
had to all appearance vanished from discussion. It
probably held its ground among sober-minded and
thoughtful men, though neither the church nor the
world was prepared to hear of it with tolerance. Once,
in the year 1348, it received distinct expression. But
retractation by compulsion immediately followed ; and,
thus discouraged, it slumbered till the seventeenth
century, when it was revived by a contemporary and
friend of Hobbes of Malmesbury, the orthodox Catholic
provost of Digne, Gassendi. But, before stating his
relation to the Epicurean doctrine, it will be well to
say a few words on the effect, as regards science, of the
general introduction of monotheism among European
nations.

‘ Were men,’ says Hume, ‘ led into the apprehension
of invisible intelligent power by contemplation of the
works of Nature, they could never possibly entertain
any conception but of one single Being, who bestowed
existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted
all its parts to one regular system.’ Referring to the
condition of the heathen, who sees a god behind every
natural event, thus peopling the world with thousands
of beings whose caprices are incalculable, Lange shows
the impossibility of any compromise between such

1 See Huxley’s admirable ‘ Essay on Descartes.’ < Lay Sermons -
pp. 364, 365.

1G0

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

notions and those of science, which proceeds on the
assumption of never-changing law and causality. ‘ But,’
he continues, with characteristic penetration, ‘ when the
great thought of one God, acting as a unit upon the
universe, has been seized, the connection of things in
accordance with the law of cause and effect is not only
thinkable, but it is a necessary consequence of the
assumption. For when I see ten thousand wheels in
motion, and know, or believe, that they are all driven by
one motive power, then I know that I have before me
a mechanism, the action of every part of which is
determined by the plan of the whole. So much being
assumed, it follows that I may investigate the structure
of that machine, and the various motions of its parts.
For the time being, therefore, this conception renders
scientific action free.’ In other words, were a capricious
God at the circumference of every wheel and at the end
of every lever, the action of the machine would be in-
calculable by the methods of science. But the actions
of all its parts being rigidly determined by their con-
nections and relations, and these being brought into
play by a single motive power, then though this last
prime mover may elude me, I am still able to compre-
hend the machinery which it sets in motion. We have
here a conception of the relation of Nature to its Author,
which seems perfectly acceptable to some minds, but
perfectly intolerable to others. Newton and Boyle
lived and worked happily under the influence of this
conception ; Goethe rejected it with vehemence, and the
same repugnance to accepting it is manifest in Carlyle.1

1 Boyle’s model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with an
outside Artificer. Goethe, on the other hand, sang

‘ Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,

Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen.’

See also Carlyle, ‘ Past and Present,’ chap. v.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

161

The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human
mind are traceable throughout history, great writers
ranging themselves sometimes on the one side, some-
times on the other. Men of warm feelings, and minds
open to the elevating impressions produced by nature
as a whole, whose satisfaction, therefore, is rather
ethical than logical, lean to the synthetic side ; while
the analytic harmonises best with the more precise
and more mechanical bias which seeks the satisfaction
of the understanding. Some form of pantheism was
usually adopted by the one, while a detached Creator,
working more or less after the manner of men, was often
assumed by the other. Gassendi, as sketched by Lange,
is hardly to be ranked with either. Having formally
acknowledged God as the great first cause, he im-
mediately dropped the idea, applied the known laws of
mechanics to the atoms, and deduced from them all
vital phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and dwelt
upon his purity, both of doctrine and of life. True he
was a heathen, but so was Aristotle. Epicurus assailed
superstition and religion, and rightly, because he did
not know the true religion. He thought that the gods
neither rewarded nor punished, and he adored them
purely in consequence of their completeness : here we
see, says Gassendi, the reverence of the child, instead of
the fear of the slave. The errors of Epicurus shall be
corrected, and the body of his truth retained. Gassendi
then proceeds, as any heathen might have done, to
build up the world, and all that therein is, of atoms and
molecules. God, who created earth and water, plants
and animals, produced in the first place a definite
number of atoms, which constituted the seed of all
things. Then began that series of combinations and
decompositions which now goes on, and which will con-
tinue in future. The principle of every change resides

VOL. II. m

1 62

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ill matter. In artificial productions the moving prin-
ciple is different from the material worked upon ; but
in nature the agent works within, being the most active
and mobile part of the material itself. Thus this bold
ecclesiastic, without incurring the censure of the church
or the world, contrives to outstrip Mr. Darwin. The
same cast of mind which caused him to detach the
Creator from his universe, led him also to detach the
soul from the body, though to the body he ascribes an
influence so large as to render the soul almost unneces-
sary. The aberrations of reason were, in his view, an
affair of the material brain. Mental disease is brain-
disease ; but then the immortal reason sits apart, and
cannot be touched by the disease. The errors of mad-
ness are those of the instrument, not of the performer.

It may be more than a mere result of education,
connecting itself, probably, with the deeper mental
structure of the two men, that the idea of Gassendi,
above enunciated, is substantially the same as that
expressed by Professor Clerk Maxwell, at the close of
the very able lecture delivered by him at Bradford in
1873. According to both philosophers, the atoms, if
T understand aright, are prepared materials , which,
formed once for all by the Eternal, produce by their
subsequent interaction all the phenomena of the material
world. There seems to be this difference, however,
between Gassendi and Maxwell. The one postulates,
the other infers his first cause. In his ‘ manufactured
articles,’ as he calls the atoms, Professor Maxwell finds
the basis of an induction, which enables him to scale
philosophic heights considered inaccessible by Kant,
and to take the logical step from the atoms to their
Maker

Accepting here the leadership of Kant, I doubt the
legitimacy of Maxwell’s logic ; but it is impossible not

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

163

to feel the ethic glow with which his lecture concludes.
There is, moreover, a very noble strain of eloquence
in his description of the steadfastness of the atoms :
‘ Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend
to modify, if they do not at length destroy, ^all the
arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the
whole solar system. But though in the course of ages
catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the
heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and
new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules
out of which these systems are built — the foundation
stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and
unworn.’

The atomic doctrine, in whole or in part, was enter-
tained by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton,
Boyle, and their successors, until the chemical law of
multiple proportions enabled Dalton to confer upon it
an entirely new significance. In our day there are
secessions from the theory, but it still stands firm.
Loschmidt, Stoney, and Sir William Thomson have
sought to determine the sizes of the atoms, or rather to
fix the limits between which their sizes lie ; while the
discourses of Williamson and Maxwell delivered in
Bradford in 1873 illustrate the present hold of the
doctrine upon the foremost scientific minds. In fact,
it may be doubted whether, wanting this fundamental
conception, a theory of the material universe is capable
of scientific statement.

§ 5.

Ninety years subsequent to Grassendi the doctrine
of bodily instruments, as it may be called, assumed
immense importance in the hands of Bishop Butler,
who, in his famous ‘ Analogy of Religion,’ developed,
from his own point of view, and with consummate

M 2

164

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

sagacity, a similar idea. The Bishop still influences
many superior minds ; and it will repay us to dwell for
a moment on his views. He draws the sharpest dis-
tinction between our real selves and our bodily instru-
ments. He does not, as far as I remember, use the
word soul, possibly because the term was so hackneyed
in his day, as it had been for many generations pre-
viously. But he speaks of ‘ living powers,’ ‘ perceiving
or percipient powers,’ ‘ moving agents,’ ‘ ourselves,’ in
the same sense as we should employ the term soul. He
dwells upon the fact that limbs may be removed, and
mortal diseases assail the body, the mind, almost up to
the moment of death, remaining clear. He refers to
sleep and to swoon, where the ‘ living powers ’ are sus-
pended but not destroyed. He considers it quite as
easy to conceive of existence out of our bodies as in
them ; that we may animate a succession of bodies, the
dissolution of all of them having no more tendency to
dissolve our real selves, or ‘ deprive us of living faculties
— the faculties of perception and action — than the
dissolution of any foreign matter which we are capable
of receiving impressions from, or making use of for
the common occasions of life.’ This is the key of the
Bishop's position : ‘ our organised bodies are no more a
part of ourselves than any other matter around us.’ In
proof of this he calls attention to the use of glasses,
which ‘ prepare objects ’ for the ‘ percipient power ’ ex-
actly as the eye does. The eye itself is no more
percipient than the glass ; is quite as much the instru-
ment of the true self, and also as foreign to the true self,
as the glass is. ‘ And if we see with our eyes only in
the same manner as we do with glasses, the like may
justly be concluded from analogy of all our senses.’

Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a precisely
opposite conclusion : and it certainly would be interest-

THE BELFAST ADDKESS.

165

ing, if not profitable, to us all, to hear what he would
or could urge in opposition to the reasoning of the
Bishop. As a brief discussion of the point will enable
us to see the bearings of an important question, I will
here permit a disciple of Lucretius to try the strength
of the Bishop’s position, and then allow the Bishop to
retaliate, with the view of rolling back, if he can, the
difficulty upon Lucretius.

The argument might proceed in this fashion : —

‘ Subjected to the test of mental presentation ( Vor-
stellung ), your views, most honoured prelate, would
offer to many minds a great, if not an insuperable,
difficulty. You speak of “ living powers,” “ percipient
or perceiving powers,” and “ ourselves ; ” but can you
form a mental picture of any of these, apart from the
organism through which it is supposed to act ? Test
yourself honestly, and see whether you possess any
faculty that would enable you to form such a conception.
The true self has a local habitation in each of us ; thus
localised, must it not possess a form ? If so, what
form ? Have you ever for a moment realised it ?
When a leg is amputated the body is divided into two
parts ; is the true self in both of them or in one ?
Thomas Aquinas might say in both ; but not you, for
you appeal to the consciousness associated with one of
the two parts, to prove that the other is foreign matter.
Is consciousness, then, a necessary element of the true
self? If so, what do you say to the case of the whole
body being deprived of consciousness ? If not, then on
what grounds do you deny any portion of the true self
to the severed limb ? It seems very singular that
from' the beginning to the end of your admirable book
(and no one admires its sober strength more than I do),
you never once mention the brain or nervous system.
You begin at one end of the body, and show that its

166

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

parts may be removed without prejudice to the per-
ceiving power. What if you begin at the other end,
and remove, instead of the leg, the brain ? The body,
as before, is divided into two parts ; but both are now
in the same predicament, and neither can be appealed
to to prove that the other is foreign matter. Or,
instead of going so far as to remove the brain itself, let
a certain portion of its bony covering be removed, and
let a rhythmic series of pressures and relaxations of
pressure be applied to the soft substance. At every
pressure “ the faculties of perception and of action ”
vanish ; at every relaxation of pressure they are restored.
Where, during the intervals of pressure, is the per-
ceiving power ? I once had the discharge of a large
Leyden battery passed unexpectedly through me : I felt
n'othing, but was simply blotted out of conscious ex-
istence for a sensible interval. Where was my true self
during that interval ? Men who have recovered from
lightning-stroke have been much longer in the same
state ; and indeed in cases of ordinary concussion of
the brain, days may elapse during which no experience
is registered in consciousness. Where is the man
himself during the period of insensibility ? You may
say that I beg the question when I assume the man to
have been unconscious, that he was really conscious all
the time, and has simply forgotten what had occurred
to him. In reply to this, I can only say that no one
need shrink from the worst tortures that superstition
ever invented, if only so felt and so remembered. I do
not think your theory of instruments goes at all to the
bottom of the matter. A telegraph-operator has his
instruments, by means of which he converses with the
world ; our bodies possess a nervous system, which plays
a similar part between the perceiving power and external
things. Cut the wires of the operator, break his battery,

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

167

demagnetise his needle ; by this means you certainly
sever his connection with the world ; hut, inasmuch as
these are real instruments, their destruction does not
touch the man who uses them. The operator survives,
and he hnoivs that he survives. What is there, L would
ask, in the human system that answers to this conscious
survival of the operator when the battery of the brain
is so disturbed as to produce insensibility, or when it is-
destroyed altogether ?

‘ Another consideration, which you may regard as
slight, presses upon me with some force. The brain
may change from health to disease, and through such a
change the most exemplary man may be converted into-
a debauchee or a murderer. My very noble and
approved good master had, as you know, threatenings
of lewdness introduced into his brain by his jealous
wife’s philter ; and sooner than permit himself to run
even the risk of yielding to these base promptings he
slew himself. How could the hand of Lucretius have
been thus turned against himself if the real Lucretius
remained as before ? Can the brain or can it not act in
this distempered way without the intervention of the
immortal reason ? If it can, then it is a prime mover
which requires only healthy regulation to render it
reasonably self-acting, and there is no apparent need of
your immortal reason at all. If it cannot, then the
immortal reason, by its mischievous activity in oper-
ating upon a broken instrument, must have the credit
of committing every imaginable extravagance and crime.
I think, if you will allow me to say so, that the gravest
consequences are likely to flow from your estimate of
the body. To regard the brain as you would a staff or
an eyeglass — to shut your eyes to all its mystery, to the
perfect correlation of its condition and our consciousness,
to the fact that a slight excess or defect of blood in it

168

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

produces the very swoon to which you refer, and that
in relation to it our meat, and drink, and air, and
exercise, have a perfectly transcendental value and sig-
nificance— to forget all this does, I think, open a way
to innumerable errors in our habits of life, and may
possibly, in some cases, initiate and foster that very
disease, and consequent mental ruin, which a wiser
appreciation of this mysterious organ would have
avoided.’

I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful after hearing
this argument. He was not the man to allow anger to
mingle with the consideration of a point of this kind.
After due reflection, and having strengthened himself
by that honest contemplation of the facts which was
habitual with him, and which includes the desire to give
even adverse reasonings their due weight, I can suppose
the Bishop to proceed thus : ‘ You will remember that
in the “ Analogy of Beligion,” of which you have so
kindly spoken, I did not profess to prove anything
absolutely, and that I over and over again acknowledged
and insisted on the smallness of our knowledge, or
rather the depth of our ignorance, as regards the whole
system of the universe. My object was to show my
deistical friends, who set forth so eloquently the beauty
and beneficence of Nature and the Euler thereof, while
they had nothing but scorn for the so-called absurdities
of the Christian scheme, that they were in no better
condition than we were, and that, for every difficulty
found upon our side, quite as great a difficulty was to
be found upon theirs. I will now, with your permission,
adopt a similar line of argument. You area Lucretian,
and from the combination and separation of insensate
atoms deduce all terrestrial things, including organic
forms and their phenomena. Let me tell you in the
first instance how far I am prepared to go with you. I

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

169

admit that you can build crystalline forms out of this
play of molecular force ; that the diamond, amethyst,
and snow-star are truly wonderful structures which are
thus produced. I will go farther and acknowledge that
even a tree or flower might in this way be organised.
Nay, if you can show me an animal without sensation,
I will concede to you that it also might be put together
by the smtable play of molecular force.

‘ Thus far our way is clear, but now comes my diffi-
culty. Your atoms are individually without sensation,
much more are they without intelligence. May I ask
you, then, to try your hand upon this problem. Take
your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms,
your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your
dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as
grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine
them separate and sensatiouless ; observe them running
together and forming all imaginable combinations.
This, as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the
mind. But can you see, or dream, or in any way
imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and from these
individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion
are to rise ? Are you likely to extract Homer out of
the rattling of dice, oi the Differential Calculus out of
the clash of billiard-balls ? I am not all bereft of this
Vorstellungs-Kraft of which you speak, nor am I, like
so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum as regards
scientific knowledge. I can follow a particle of musk
until it reaches the olfactory nerve ; I can follow the
waves of sound until their tremors reach the water of
the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti’s fibres in
motion ; I can also visualise the waves of aether as they
cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay more, I am able
to pursue to the central organ the motion thus imparted
at the periphery, and to see in idea the very molecules

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

170

ot the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is not
baffled by these physical processes. What baffles and
bewilders me is the notion that from those physical
tremors things so utterly incongruous with them as
sensation, thought, and emotion can be derived. You
may say, or think, that this issue of consciousness from
the clash of atoms is not more incongruous than the
flash of light from the union of oxygen and hydrogen.
But I beg to say that it is. For such incongruity as
the flash possesses is that which I now force upon your
attention. The i flash ’ is an affair of consciousness,
the objective counterpart of which is a vibration. It is
a flash only by your interpretation. You are the cause
of the apparent incongruity; and you are the thing
that puzzles me. I need not remind you that the great
Leibnitz felt the difficulty which I feel ; and that to
get rid of this monstrous deduction of life from death
he displaced your atoms by his monads, which were
more or less perfect mirrors of the universe, and out of
the summation and integration of which he supposed
all the phenomena of life — sentient, intellectual, and
emotional — to arise.

‘ Your difficulty, then, as I see you are ready to
admit, is quite as great as mine. You cannot satisfy
the human understanding in its demand for logical con-
tinuity between molecular processes and the phenomena
of consciousness. This is a rock on which Materialism
must inevitably split whenever it pretends to- be a
complete philosophy of life. What is the moral, my
Lucretian ? You and I are not likely to indulge in
ill-temper in the discussion of these great topics, where
we see so much room for honest differences of opinion.
But there are people of less wit or more bigotry (I say
it with humility), on both sides, who are ever ready to

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

171

mingle anger and vituperation with such discussions.
There are, for example, writers of note and influence at
the present day, who are not ashamed publicly to assume
the “ deep personal sin ” of a great logician to be the
cause of his unbelief in a theologic dogma. 1 And
there are others who hold that we, who cherish our
noble Bible, wrought as it has been into the constitution
of our forefathers, and by inheritance into us, must
necessarily be hypocritical and insincere. Let us dis-
avow and discountenance such people, cherishing the
unswerving faith that what is good and true in both our
arguments will be preserved for the benefit of humanity,
while all that is bad or false will disappear.’

I hold the Bishop’s reasoning to be unanswerable,
and his liberality to be worthy of imitation.

It is worth remarking that in one respect the
Bishop was a product of his age. Long previous to his
day the nature of the soul had been so favourite and
general a topic of discussion, that, when the students of
the Italian Universities wished to know the leanings of
a new Professor, they at once requested him to lecture
upon the soul. About the time of Bishop Butler the
question was not only agitated but extended. It was
seen by the clear-witted men who entered this arena,
that many of their best arguments applied equally to
brutes and men. The Bishop’s arguments were of this
character. He saw it, admitted it, took the consequence,
and boldly embraced the whole animal world in his
scheme of immortality.

1 This is the aspect under which the late Editor of the ‘ Dublin
Review ’ presented to his readers the memory of John Stuart Mill.
I can only say, that I would as soon take my chance in the other
world, in the company of the ‘unbeliever,’ as in that of his Jesuit
detractor. In Dr. Ward we have an example of a wholesome and
vigorous nature, soured and perverted by a poisonous creed.

172

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

§ 6.

Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering trust the
chronology of the Old Testament, describing it as
‘ confirmed by the natural and civil history of the world,
collected from common historians, from the state of
the earth, and from the late inventions of arts and
sciences.’ These words mark progi’ess ; and they must
seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop’s successors of to-
day. It is hardly necessary to inform you that since
his time the domain of the naturalist has been im-
mensely extended — the whole science of geology, with
its astounding revelations regarding the life of the
ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity of
old conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being
rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for
six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thou-
sand thousand, but for aeons embracing untold millions
of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and
death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the
geologist and palaeontologist, from sub- cambrian depths
to the deposits thickening over the sea- bottoms of to-
day. And upon the leaves of that stone book are, as
you know, stamped the characters, plainer and surer
than those formed by the ink of history, which carry the
mind back into abysses of past time, compared with
which the periods which satisfied Bishop Butler cease to
have a visual angle.

The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified
forms in which life was at one time active, increased to
multitudes and demanded classification. They were
grouped in genera, species, and varieties, according to
the degree of similarity subsisting between them. Thus
confusion was avoided, each object being found in the
pigeon-hole appropriated to it and to its fellows of

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

173

similar morphological or physiological character. The
general fact soon became evident that none but the
simplest forms of life lie lowest down ; that, as we
climb higher among the superimposed strata, more
perfect forms appear. The change, however, from
form to form was not continuous, but by steps — some
small, some great. ‘ A section,’ says Mr. Huxley, ‘ a
hundred feet thick will exhibit at different heights
a dozen species of Ammonite, none of which passes
beyond the particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the
zone below it, or into that above it.’ Tn the presence
of such facts it was not possible to avoid the question :
Have these forms, showing, though in broken stages,
and with many irregularities, this unmistakable general
advance, being subjected to no continuous law of growth
or variation ? Had our education been purely scientific,
or had it been sufficiently detached from influences
which, however ennobling in another domain, have
always proved hindrances and delusions when intro-
duced as factors into the domain of physics, the scienti-
fic mind never could have swerved from the search for
a law of growth, or allowed itself to accept the anthropo-
morphism which regarded each successive stratum as a
kind of mechanic’s bench for the manufacture of new
species out of all relation to the old.

Biassed, however, by their previous education, the
great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative
act to account for the appearance of each new group of
organisms. Doubtless numbers of them were clear-
headed enough to see that this was no explanation at
all — that, in point of fact, it was an attempt, by the
introduction of a greater difficulty, to account for a
less. But, having nothiag to offer in the way of explana-
tion, they for the most part held their peace. Still the
thoughts of reflecting men naturally and necessarily

174

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

simmered round the question. De Maillet, a contem-
porary of Newton, has been brought into notice by
Professor Huxley as one who ‘had a notion of the
modifiability of living forms.’ The late Sir Benjamin
Brodie, a man of highly philosophic mind, often drew
my attention to the fact that, as early as 1794, Charles
Darwin’s grandfather was the pioneerof Charles Darwin. 1
In 1801, and in subsequent years, the celebrated
Lamarck, who, through the vigorous exposition of his
views by the author of the ‘ Vestiges of Creation,’ ren-
dered the public mind perfectly familiar with the idea
of evolution, endeavoured to show the development of
species out of changes of habit and external condition.
In 1813 Dr. Wells, the founder of our present theory of
Dew, read before the Royal Society a paper in which,
to use the words of Mr. Darwin, ‘ he distinctly re-
cognises the principle of natural selection ; and this
is the first recognition that has been indicated.’ The
thoroughness and skill with which Wells pursued his
work, and the obvious independence of his character,
rendered him long ago a favourite with me ; and it
gave me the liveliest pleasure to alight upon this
additional testimony to his penetration. Professor
Grant, Mr. Patrick Matthew, Von Buch, the author of
the ‘ Vestiges,’ D’Halloy, and others, by the enunciation
of opinions more or less clear and correct, showed that
the question had been fermenting long prior to the
year 1858, when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simul-
taneously, but independently, placed their closely con-
current views before the Linnean Society.2

1 ‘Zoonomia,’ vol. i. pp. 500-510.

2 In 1855 Mr. Herbert Spencer (‘Principles of Psychology,’ 2nd
edit. vol. i. p. 465) expressed ‘the belief that life under all its forms
has arisen by an unbroken evolution, and through the instrumen-
tality of what are called natural causes.’ This was my belief also
at that time.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

175

These papers were followed in 1859 by the publication
of the first edition of the 4 Origin of Species.’ All great
things come slowly to the birth. Copernicus, as I in-
formed you, pondered his great work for thirty-three
years. Newton for nearly twenty years kept the idea
of Gravitation before his mind ; for twenty years also
he dwelt upon his discovery of Fluxions, and doubtless
would have continued to make it the object of his
private thought, had he not found Leibnitz upon his
track. Darwin for two-and-twenty years pondered the
problem of the origin of species, and doubtless he would
have continued to do so had he not found Wallace upon
his track.1 A concentrated, but full and powerful,
epitome of his labours was the consequence. The book
was by no means an easy one ; and probably not one
in every score of those who then attacked it, had read
its pages through, or were competent to grasp their
significance if they had. I do not say this merely to
discredit them : for there were in those days some
really eminent scientific men, entirely raised above the
heat of popular prejudice, and willing to accept any
conclusion that science had to offer, provided it was
duly backed by fact and argument, who entirely mis-
took Mr. Darwin’s views. In fact, the work needed an
expounder, and it found one in Mr. Huxley. I know
nothing more admirable in the way of scientific exposi-
tion than those early articles of his on the origin of
species. He swept the curve of discussion through the
really significant points of the subject, enriched his
exposition with profound original remarks and reflec-
tions, often summing up in a single pithy sentence an
argument which a less compact mind would have
spread over pages. But there is one impression made

1 The behaviour of Mr. Wallace in relation lo this subject has
been dignified in the highest degree.

176

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

by the book itself which no exposition of it, however
luminous, can convey ; and that is the impression of
the vast amount of labour, both of observation and of
thought, implied in its production. Let us glance at
its principles.

It is conceded on all hands that what are called
‘ varieties’ are continually produced. The rule is pro-
bably without exception. No chick, or child, is in all
respects and particulars the counterpart of its brother
and sister ; and in such differences we have ‘ variety ’
incipient. No naturalist could tell how far this
variation could be carried ; but the great mass of them
held that never, by any amount of internal or external
change, nor by the mixture of both, could the offspring
of the same progenitor so far deviate from each other
as to constitute different species. The function of the
experimental philosopher is to combine the conditions
of Nature and to produce her results ; and this was the
method of Darwin.1 * * He made himself acquainted with
what could, without any manner of doubt, be done in
the way of producing variation. He associated himself
with pigeon-fanciers — bought, begged, kept, and ob-
served every breed that he could obtain. Though de-
rived from a common stock, the diversities of these
pigeons were such that 4 a score of them might be
chosen which, if shown to an ornithologist, and he were
told that they were wild birds, would certainly be
ranked by him as well-defined species.’ The simple
principle which guides the pigeon-fancier, as it does the
cattle-breeder, is the Selection of some variety that
strikes his fancy, and the propagation of this variety

1 The first step only towards experimental demonstration lias

been taken. Experiments now begun might, a couple of centuries

hence, furnish data of incalculable value, which ought to be sup-

plied to the science of the future.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

177

by inheritance. With his eye still directed to the
particular appearance which he wishes to exaggerate,
he selects it as it reappears in successive broods, and
thus adds increment to increment until an astonishing
amount of divergence from the parent type is effected.
The breeder in this case does not produce the elements
of the variation. He simply observes them, and by
selection adds them together until the required result
has been obtained. ‘ No man,’ says Mr. Darwin, 6 would
ever try to make a fantail till he saw a pigeon with a
tail developed in some slight degree in an unusual
manner, or a pouter until he saw a pigeon with a crop
of unusual size.’ Thus nature gives the hint, man acts
upon it, and by the law of inheritance exaggerates the
deviation.

Having thus satisfied himself by indubitable facts
that the organisation of an animal or of a plant (for
precisely the same treatment applies to plants) is to
some extent plastic, he passes from variation under
domestication to variation under nature. Hitherto we
have dealt with the adding together of small changes
by the conscious selection of man. Can Nature thus
select ? Mr. Darwin’s answer is, ‘ Assuredly she can.’
The number of living things produced is far in excess
of the number that can be supported ; hence at some
period or other of their lives there must be a struggle
for existence. And what is the infallible result?" If
one organism were a perfect copy of the other in regard
to strength, skill, and agility, external conditions would
decide. But this is not the case. Here we have the
fact of variety offering itself to nature, as in the former
instance it offered itself to man ; and those varieties
which are least competent to cope with surrounding
>, conditions will infallibly give way to those that are
most competent. To use a familar proverb, the weak-

VOL. II. N

178

FK AOMEN TS OF SCIENCE.

est goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction
again breeds to over-production, transmitting the quali-
ties which secured its maintenance, but transmitting
them in different degrees. The struggle for food again
supervenes, and those to whom the favourable quality
has been transmitted in excess, will triumph as before.

It is easy to see that we have here the addition of
increments favourable to the individual, still more
rigorously carried out than in the case of domestica-
tion ; for not only are unfavourable specimens not
selected by nature, but they are destroyed. This is
what Mr. Darwin calls 4 Natural Selection,’ which acts
by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited
modifications, each profitable to the preserved being.
With this idea he interpenetrates and leavens the vast
store of facts that he and others have collected. We
cannot, without shutting our eyes through fear or pre-
judice, fail to see that Darwin is here dealing, not with
imaginary, but with true causes ; nor can we fail to
discern what vast modifications may be produced by
natural selection in periods sufficiently long. Each
individual increment may resemble what mathema-
ticians call a 4 differential ’ (a quantity indefinitely
small) ; but definite and great changes may obviously
be produced by the integration of these infinitesimal
quantities, through practically infinite time.

If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative
power, acting after human fashion, it certainly is not
because he is unacquainted with the numberless ex-
quisite adaptations, on which this notion of a super-
natural Artificer has been founded. His book is a
repository of the most startling facts of this description.
Take the marvellous observation which he cites from
Dr. Kruger, where a bucket, with an aperture serving
as a spout, is formed in an orchid. Bees visit the

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

179

flower : in eager search of material for their combs,
they push each other into the bucket, the drenched
ones escaping from their involuntary bath by the spout.
Here they rub their backs against the viscid stigma of
the flower and obtain glue ; then against the pollen-
masses, which are thus stuck to the back of the bee
and carried away. 4 When the bee, so provided, flies to
another flower, or to the same flower a second time,
and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket, and
then crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass upon
its back necessarily comes first into contact with the
viscid stigma,’ which takes up the pollen ; and this is
how that orchid is fertilised. Or take this other case
of the Ccctasetum. 4 Bees visit these flowers in order
to gnaw the labellum ; in doing this they inevitably
touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection. This,
when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration to a
certain membrane, which is instantly ruptured, setting
free a spring, by which the pollen-mass is shot forth
like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its
viscid extremity to the back of the bee.’ In this way
the fertilising pollen is spread abroad.

It is the mind thus stored with the choicest
materials of the teleologist that rejects teleology,
seeking to refer these wonders to natural causes. They
illustrate, according to him, the method of nature, not
the 4 technic ’ of a manlike Artificer. The beauty of
flowers is due to natural selection. Those that distin-
guish themselves by vividly contrasting colours from
the surrounding green leaves are most readily seen,
most frequently visited by insects, most often fertilised,
and hence most favoured by natural selection. Coloured
berries also readily attract the attention of birds and
beasts, which feed upon them, spread their manured
seeds abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs possessing

180

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

such berries a greater chance in the struggle for exis-
tence.

With profound analytic and synthetic skill, Mr.
Darwin investigates the cell-making instinct of the
hive-bee. His method of dealing with it is represen-
tative. He falls back from the more perfectly to the
less perfectly developed instinct — from the hive-bee to
the humble bee, which uses its own cocoon as a comb,
and to classes of bees of intermediate skill, endeavour-
ing to show how the passage might be gradually made
from the lowest to the highest. The saving of wax is
the most important point in the economy of bees.
Twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar ai'e said to be
needed for the secretion of a single pound of wax. The
quantities of nectar necessary for the wax must therefore
be vast; and every improvement of constructive instinct
which results in the saving of wax is a direct profit to
the insect’s life. The time that would otherwise be
devoted to the making of wax, is devoted to the
gathering and storing of honey for winter food. Mr.
Darwin passes from the humble bee with its rude cells,
through the Melipona with its more artistic cells, to
the hive-bee with its astonishing architecture. The
bees place themselves at equal distances apart upon the
wax, sweep and excavate equal spheres round the
selected points. The spheres intersect, and the planes
of intersection are built up with thin laminae. Hexa-
gonal cells are thus formed. This mode of treating
such questions is, as I have said, representative. The
expositor habitually retires from the more perfect and
complex, to the less perfect and simple, and carries you
with him through stages of perfecting — adds increment
to increment of infinitesimal change, and in this way
gradually breaks down your reluctance to admit that
the exquisite climax of the whole could be a result of
natural selection.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

181

Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty ; and, saturated as
the subject was with his own thought, he must have
known, better than his critics, the weakness as well as
the strength of his theory. This of course would be of
little avail were his object a temporary dialectic victory,
instead of the establishment of a truth which he means
to be everlasting. But he takes no pains to disguise
the weakness he has discerned; nay, he takes every
pains to bring it into the strongest light. His vast
resources enable him to cope with objections started by
himself and others, so as to leave the final impression
upon the reader’s mind that, if they be not completely
answered, they certainly are not fatal. Their negative
force being thus destroyed, you are free to be influenced
by the vast positive mass of evidence he is able to bring
before you. This largeness of knowledge, and readiness
of resource, render Mr. Darwin the most terrible of
antagonists. Accomplished naturalists have levelled
heavy and sustained criticisms against him — not always
with the view of fairly weighing his theory, but with
the express intention of exposing its weak points only.
This does not irritate him. He treats every objection
with a soberness and thoroughness which even Bishop
Butler might be proud to imitate, surrounding each
fact with its appropriate detail, placing it in its proper
relations, and usually giving it a significance which,
as long as it was kept isolated, failed to appear.
This is done without a trace of ill-temper. He moves
over the subject with the passionless strength of a
glacier ; and the grinding of the rocks is not always
without a counterpart in the logical pulverisation of the
objector. But though in handling this mighty theme
all passion has been stilled, there is an emotion of the
intellect, incident to the discernment of new truth,
which often colours and warms the pages of Mr. Darwin.

] 82

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

His success lias been great ; and this implies not only
the solidity of his work, but the preparedness of the
public mind for such a revelation. On this head, a re-
mark of Agassiz impressed me more than anything else.
Sprung from a race of theologians, this celebrated man
combated to the last the theory of natural selection.
One of the many times I had the pleasure of meeting
him in the United States was at Mr. Winthrop’s beau-
tiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Rising from
luncheon, we all halted as if by common consent, in
front of a window, and continued there a discussion
which had been started at table. The maple was in its
autumn glory, and the exquisite beauty of the scene
outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without
disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost
sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the gentlemen stand-
ing round, ‘ I confess that 1 was not prepared to see
this theory received as it has been by the best intellects
of our time. Its success is greater than I could have
thought possible.’

§ 7.

In our day grand generalisations have been reached.
The theory of the origin of species is but one of them.
Another, of still wider grasp and more radical signifi-
cance, is the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy,
the ultimate philosophical issues of which are as yet but
dimly seen — that doctrine which ‘ binds nature fast in
fate,’ to an extent not hitherto recognised, exacting
from every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from
every consequent its equivalent antecedent, and bring-
ing vital as well as physical phenomena under the
dominion of that law of causal connection which, so tar
as the human understanding has yet pierced, asserts

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

183

itself everywhere in nature. Long in advance of all
definite experiment upon the subject, the constancy and
indestructibility of matter had been affirmed ; and all
subsequent experience justified the affirmation. Mayer
extended the attribute of indestructibility to energy,
applying it in the first instance to inorganic,1 and after-
wards with profound insight to organic nature. The
vegetable world, though drawing all its nutriment
from invisible sources, was proved incompetent to gene-
rate anew either matter or force. Its matter is for the
most part transmuted gas ; its force transformed solar
force. The animal world was proved to be equally un-
creative, all its motive energies being referred to the
combustion of its food. The activity of each animal,
as a whole, was proved to be the transferred activity of
its molecules. The muscles were shown to be stores of
mechanical energy, potential until unlocked by the
nerves, and then resulting in muscular contractions.
The speed at which messages fly to and fro along the
nerves was determined by Helmholtz, and found to be,
not, as had been previously supposed, equal to that of
light or electricity, but less than the speed of sound —
less even than that of an eagle.

This was the work of the physicist : then came the
conquests of the comparative anatomist and physiolo-
gist, revealing the structure of every animal, and the
function of every organ in the whole biological series,
from the lowest zoophyte up to man. The nervous sys-
tem had been made the object of profound and con-
tinued study, the wonderful and, at bottom, entirely
mysterious controlling power which it exercises over the
whole organism, physical and mental, being recognised
more and more. Thought could not be kept back from

1 Dr. Berthold has shown that Leibnitz had sound views re-
garding the conservation of energy in inorganic nature.

184

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

a subject so profoundly suggestive. Besides the physical
life dealt with by Mr. Darwin, there is a psychical life
presenting similar gradations, and asking equally for a
solution. How are the different grades and orders of
Mind to be accounted for ? What is the principle of
growth of that mysterious power which on our planet
culminates in Reason ? These are questions which,
though not thrusting themselves so forcibly upon the
attention of the general public, had not only occupied
many reflecting minds, but had been formally broached
by one of them before the 4 Origin of Species ’ ap-
peared.

With the mass of materials furnished by the phy-
sicist and physiologist in his hands, Mr. Herbert
Spencer, twenty years ago, sought to graft upon this
basis a system of psychology; and two years ago a
second and greatly amplified edition of his work ap-
peared. Those who have occupied themselves with the
beautiful experiments of Plateau will remember that
when two spherules of olive-oil suspended in a mixture
of alcohol and water of the same density as the oil,
are brought together, they do not immediately unite.
Something like a pellicle appears to be formed around the
drops, the rupture of which is immediately followed by
the coalescence of the globules into one. There are organ-
isms whose vital actions are almost as purely physical
as the coalescence of such drops of oil. They come into
contact and fuse themselves thus together. From such
organisms to others a shade higher, from these to others
a shade higher still, and on through an ever-ascending
series, Mr. Spencer conducts his argument. There are
two obvious factors to be here taken into account — the
creature and the medium in which it lives, or, as it is
often expressed, the organism and its environment. Mi*.
Spencer’s fundamental principle is, that between these

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

185

two factors there is incessant interaction. The organism
is played upon by the environment, and is modified to
meet the requirements of the environment. Life he de-
fines to be ‘ a continuous adjustment of internal relations
to external relations.’

In the lowest organisms we have a kind of tactual
sense diffused over the entire body ; then, through im-
pressions from without and their corresponding adjust-
ments, special portions of the surface become more
responsive to stimuli than others. The senses are
nascent, the basia of all of them being that simple
tactual sense which the sage Democritus recognised
2,300 years ago as their common progenitor. The
action of light, in the first instance, appears to be a
mere disturbance of the chemical processes in the animal
organism, similar to that which occurs in the leaves of
plants. By degrees the action becomes localised in a
few pigment-cells, more sensitive to light than the
surrounding tissue. The eye is incipient. At first it is
merely capable of revealing differences of light and
shade produced by bodies close at hand. Followed, as
the interception of the light commonly is, by the con-
tact of the closely adjacent opaque body, sight in this
condition becomes a kind of ‘ anticipatory touch.’ The
adjustment continues; a slight bulging out of the
epidermis over the pigment-granules supervenes. A
lens is incipient, and, through the operation of infinite
adjustments, at length reaches the perfection that it
displays in the hawk and eagle. So of the other senses ;
they are special differentiations of a tissue which was
originally vaguely sensitive all over.

With the development of the senses, the adjustments
between the organism and its environment gradually
extend in space, a multiplication of experiences and a
corresponding modification of conduct being the result.

186

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

The adjustments also extend in time , covering con-
tinually greater intervals. Along with this extension
in space and time the adjustments also increase in
speciality and complexity, passing through the various
grades of brute life, and prolonging themselves into the
domain of reason. Very striking are Mr. Spencer’s
remarks regarding the influence of the sense of touch
upon the development of intelligence. This is, so to
say, the mother-tongue of all the senses, into which
they must be translated to be of service to the organism.
Hence its importance. The parrot is the most in-
telligent of birds, and its tactual power is also greatest.
From this sense it gets knowledge, unattainable by
birds which cannot employ their feet as hands. The
elephant is the most sagacious of quadrupeds — its
tactual range and skill, and the consequent multipli-
cation of experiences, which it owes to its wonderfully
adaptable trunk, being the basis of its sagacity. Feline
animals, for a similar cause, are more sagacious than
hoofed animals, — atonement being to some extent made
in the case of the horse, by the possession of sensitive
prehensile lips. In the Primates the evolution of
intellect and the evolution of tactual appendages go
hand in hand. In the most intelligent anthropoid apes
we find the tactual range and delicacy greatly augmented,
new avenues of knowledge being thus opened to the
animal. Man crowns the edifice here, not only in virtue
of his own manipulatory power, but through the enor-
mous extension of his range of experience, by the
invention of instruments of precision, which serve as
supplemental senses and supplemental limbs. The
reciprocal action of these is finely described and illus-
trated That chastened intellectual emotion to which
I have referred in connection with Mr. Darwin, is not
absent in Mr. Spencer. His illustrations possess at

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

187

times exceeding vividness and force ; and from his
style on such occasions it is to be inferred, that the
ganglia of this Apostle of the Understanding are some-
times the seat of a nascent poetic thrill.

It is a fact of supreme importance that actions, the
performance of which at first requires even painful
effort and deliberation, may, by habit, be rendered auto-
matic. Witness the slow learning of its letters by a
child, and the subsequent facility of reading in a man,
when each group of letters which forms a word is in-
stantly, and without effort, fused to a single perception.
Instance the billiard-player, whose muscles of hand and
eye, when he reaches the perfection of his art, are un-
consciously co-ordinated. Instance the musician, who,
by practice, is enabled to fuse a multitude of arrange-
ments, auditory, tactual, and muscular, into a process of
automatic manipulation. Combining such facts with
the doctrine of hereditary transmission, we reach a
theory of Instinct. A chick, after coming out of the
egg, balances itself correctly, runs about, picks up food,
thus showing that it possesses a power of directing its
movements to definite ends. How did the chick learn
this very complex co-ordination of eyes, muscles, and
beak ? It has not been individually taught ; its personal
experience is nil ; but it has the benefit of ancestral
experience. In its inherited organisation are registered
the powers which it displays at birth. So also as
regards the instinct of the hive-bee, already referred to.
The distance at which the insects stand apart when they
sweep their hemispheres and build their cells is ‘organi-
cally remembered.’ Man also carries with him the
physical texture of his ancestry, as well as the inherited
intellect bound up with it. The defects of intelligence
during infancy and youth are probably less due to a
lack of individual experience, than to the fact that in

188

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

early life the cerebral organisation is still incomplete.
The period necessary for completion varies with the
race, and with the individual. As a round shot outstrips
the rifled bolt on quitting the muzzle of the gun, so
the lower race, in childhood, may outstrip the higher.
But the higher eventually overtakes the lower, and
surpasses it in range. As regards individuals, we do not
always find the precocity of youth prolonged to mental
power in maturity ; while the dulness of boyhood is
sometimes strikingly contrasted with the intellectual
energy of after years. Newton, when a boy, was weakly,
and he showed no particular aptitude at school ; but
in his eighteenth year he went to Cambridge, and soon
afterwards astonished his teachers by his power of deal-
ing with geometrical problems. During his quiet
youth his brain was slowly preparing itself to be the
organ of those energies which he subsequently dis-
played.

By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian phrase) the
image and superscription of the external world are
stamped as states of consciousness upon the organism,
the depth of the impression depending on the number
of the blows. When two or more phenomena occur in
the environment invariably together, they are stamped
to the same depth or to the same relief, and indis-
solubly connected. And here we come to the threshold
of a great question. Seeing that he could in no way
rid himself of the consciousness of Space and Time,
Kant assumed them to be necessary 4 forms of intui-
tion,’ the moulds and shapes into which our intuitions
are thrown, belonging to ourselves, and without objective
existence. With unexpected power and success, Mr.
Spencer brings the hereditary experience theory, as he
bolds it, to bear upon this question. 4 If there exist
certain external relations which are experienced by all

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

189

organisms at all instants of their waking lives — rela-
tions which are absolutely constant and universal —
there will be established answering internal relations,
that are absolutely constant and universal. Such rela-
tions we have in those of Space and Time. As the
substratum of all other relations of the Non-Ego, they
must be responded to by conceptions that are the sub-
strata of all other relations in the Ego. Being the
constant and infinitely repeated elements of thought,
they must become the automatic elements of thought —
the elements of thought which it is impossible to get
rid of — the “ forms of intuition.” ’

Throughout this application and extension of
Hartley’s and Mill’s 4 Law of Inseparable Association,’
Mr. Spencer stands upon his own ground, invoking,
instead of the experiences of the individual, the
registered experiences of the race. His overthrow of
the restriction of experience to the individual is, I
think, complete. That restriction ignores the power
of organising experience, furnished at the outset to
each individual ; it ignores the different degrees of
this power possessed by different races, and by different
individuals of the same race. Were there not in the
human brain a potency antecedent to all experience,
a dog or a cat ought to be as capable of education as
a man. These predetermined internal relations are
independent of the experiences of the individual. The

I human brain is the ‘ organised register of infinitely
numerous experiences received during the evolution
of life, or rather during the evolution of that series of
organisms through which the human organism has been
reached. The effects of the most uniform and frequent
1 of these experiences have been successively bequeathed,
r principal and interest, and have slowly mounted to that
high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the

190

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

infant. Thus it happens that the European inherits
from twenty to thirty cubic inches more of brain than
the Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties, as of
music, which scarcely exist in some inferior races,
become congenital in superior ones. Thus it happens
that out of savages unable to count up to the number
of their fingers, and speaking a language containing
only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and
Shakspeares.’

§8.

At the outset of this Address it was stated that
physical theories which lie beyond experience are
derived by a process of abstraction from experience.
It is instructive to note from this point of view the
successive introduction of new conceptions. The idea
of the attraction of gravitation was preceded by the
observation of the attraction of iron by a magnet, and
of light bodies by rubbed amber. The polarity of mag-
netism and electricity also appealed to the senses. It
thus became the substratum of the conception that
atoms and molecules are endowed with attractive and
repellent poles, by the play of which definite forms of
crystalline architecture are produced. Thus molecular
force becomes structural. 1 It required no great bold-
ness of thought to extend its play into organic nature,
and to recognise in molecular force the agency by
which both plants and animals are built up. In this
way, out of experience arise conceptions which are
wholly ultra-experiential. None of the atomists of
antiquity had any notion of this play of molecular
polar force, but they had experience of gravity, as
manifested by falling bodies. Abstracting from this,

1 See Art. on Matter and Force, or ‘Lectures on Light,’ No. III.

the BELFAST ADDRESS.

191

they permitted their atoms to fall eternally through
empty space. Democritus assumed that the larger
atoms moved more rapidly than the smaller ones, which
they therefore could overtake, and with which they
could combine. Epicurus, holding that empty space
could offer no resistance to motion, ascribed to all the
atoms the same velocity ; but he seems to have over-
looked the consequence that under such circumstances
the atoms could never combine. Lucretius cut the
knot by quitting the domain of physics altogether,
and causing the atoms to move together by a kind of
volition.

Was the instinct utterly at fault which caused
Lucretius thus to swerve from his own principles ?
Diminishing gradually the number of progenitors, Mr.
Darwin comes at length to one 4 primordial form ; ’ but
he does not say, so far as I remember, how he supposes
this form to have been introduced. He quotes with
satisfaction the words of a celebrated author and divine
who had ‘gradually learnt to see that it was just as
noble a conception of the Deity to believe He created
a few original forms, capable of self-development into
other and needful forms, as to believe He required a
fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the
action of His laws.’ What Mr. Darwin thinks of this
view of the introduction of life, I do not know. But the
anthropomorphism, which it seemed his object to set
aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a few
forms as with the creation of a multitude. We need
clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses and two
only are possible. Either let us open our doors freely
to the conception of creative acts, or abandoning them,
let us radically change our notions of Matter. If we
look at matter as pictured by Democritus, and as de-
fined for generations in our scientific text-books, the

192

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

notion of conscious life coming out of it cannot be
formed by the mind. The argument placed in the
mouth of Bishop Butler suffices, in my opinion, to
crush all such materialism as this. Those, however,
who framed these definitions of matter were but partial
students. They were not biologists, but mathematicians,
whose labours referred only to such accidents and pro-
perties of matter as could be expressed in their formulas.
Their science was mechanical science, not the science of
life. With matter in its wholeness they never dealt ;
and, denuded by their imperfect definitions, 6 the gentle
mother of all’ became the object of her children’s
dread. Let us reverently, but honestly, look the ques-
tion in the face. Divorced from matter, where is life ?
Whatever our faith may say, our knowledge shows them
to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, and
every cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious control of
Mind by Matter.

On tracing the line of life backwards, we see it ap-
proaching more and more to what we call the purely
physical condition. We come at length to those organ-
isms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended
in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the pro-
togenes of Haeckel, in which we have f a type distin-
guishable from a fragment of albumen only by its
finely granular character.’ Can we pause here ? We
break a magnet, and find two poles in each of its frag-
ments. We continue the process of breaking ; but,
however small the parts, each carries with it, though
enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we
can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision
to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do some-
thing similar in the case of life ? Is there not a
temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius,
when he affirms that 6 Nature is seen to do all things

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

193

spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the
gods ? ’ or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter
is not 1 that mere empty capacity which philosophers
have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who
hrino-s forth all things as the fruit of her own womb ? ’
Believing, as I do, in the continuity of nature, I cannot
stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use.
Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements
the vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered and
justified by science I cross the boundary of the experi-
mental evidence,1 and discern in that Matter which we,
in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwith-
standing our professed reverence for its Creator, have
hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and
potency of all terrestrial Life.

If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence
to prove that any form of life can be developed out of
matter, without demonstrable antecedent life, my reply is
that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many
has been adduced ; and that were some of us who have
pondered this question to follow a very common ex-
ample, and accept testimony because it falls in with our
belief, we also should eagerly close with the evidence
referred to. But there is in the true man of science a
desire stronger than the wish to have his beliefs up-
held ; namely, the desire to have them true. And this
stronger wish causes him to reject the most plausible
support, if he has reason to suspect that it is vitiated
by error. Those to whom I refer as having studied
this question, believing the evidence offered in favour
of 4 spontaneous generation ’ to be thus vitiated, cannot
accept it. They know full well that the chemist now
prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of sub-
• stances, which were some time ago regarded as the sole
1 This mode of procedure was not invented in Belfast.

VOL. II. 0

194

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

pioducts of vitality. They are intimately acquainted
with the structural power of matter, as evidenced in the
phenomena of crystallisation. They can justify scien-
tifically their belief in its potency, under the proper
conditions, to produce organisms. But, in reply to
your question, they will frankly admit their inability to
point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life
can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent
life. As already indicated, they draw the line from the
highest organisms through lower ones down to the
lowest ; and it is the prolongation of this line by the in-
tellect, beyond the range of the senses, that leads them
to the conclusion which Bruno so boldly enunciated.1

The ‘ materialism ’ here professed may be vastly
different from what you suppose, and I therefore crave
your gracious patience to the end. ‘ The question of
an external world,’ says J. S. Mill, ‘ is the great battle-
ground of metaphysics.’ 2 Mr. Mill himself reduces ex-
ternal phenomena to ‘ possibilities of sensation.’ Kant,
as we have seen, made time and space ‘ forms ’ of our
own intuitions. Fichte, having first by the inexorable
logic of his understanding proved himself to be a mere
link in that chain of eternal causation which holds so
rigidly in nature, violently broke the chain by making
nature, and all that it inherits, an apparition of the
mind.3 And it is by no means easy to combat such
notions. For when I say ‘ I see you,’ and that there is
not the least doubt about it, the obvious reply is, that
what I am really conscious of is an affection of my own
retina. And if I urge that my sight can be checked
by touching you, the retort would be that I am
equally transgressing the limits of fact ; for what I am

1 Bruno was a ‘ Pantheist,’ not an ‘ Atheist 'ora1 Materialist.'

2 ‘ Examination of Hamilton,’ p. 154.

6 ‘ Bestimmung des Menschen.’

TIIE BELFAST ADDRESS.

195

really conscious of is, not that you are there, but that
the nerves of my hand have undergone a change. All
we hear, and see, and touch, and taste, and smell, are,
it would be urged, mere variations of our own condition,
beyond which, even to the extent of a hair’s breadth,
we cannot go. That anything answering to our im-
pressions exists outside of ourselves is not a fact , but
an inference , to which all validity would be denied by
an idealist like Berkeley, or by a sceptic like Hume.
Mr. Spencer takes another line. With him, as with
the uneducated man, there is no doubt or question as
to the existence of an external world. But he differs
from the uneducated, who think that the world really is
what consciousness represents it to be. Our states of
consciousness are mere symbols of an outside entity
which produces them and determines the order of their
succession, but the real nature of which we can never
know.1 In fact, the whole process of evolution is the
manifestation of a Power absolutely inscrutable to the
intellect of man. As little in our day as in the days of
Job can man by searching find this Power out. Con-

1 In a paper, at once popular and profound, entitled ‘Recent
Progress in the Theory of Vision,’ contained in the volume of
lectures by Helmholtz, published by Longmans, this symbolism of
our states of consciousness is also dwelt upon. The impressions of
sense are the mere signs of external things. In this paper Helmholtz
contends strongly against the view that the consciousness of space
is inborn ; and he evidently doubts the power of the chick to pick
up grains of corn without preliminary lessons. On this point, he
says, further experiments are needed. Such experiments have been
since made by Mr. Spalding, aided, I believe, in some of his
observations by the accomplished and deeply lamented Lady
Amberly ; and they seem to prove conclusively that the chick does
not need a single moment’s tuition to enable it to stand, run, govern
the muscles of its eyes, and peck. Helmholtz, however, is con-
tending against the notion of pre-established harmony ; and I am
not aware of his views as to the organisation of experiences of race
or breed.

196

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

sidered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of
an insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved,
species differentiated, and mind unfolded, from their
prepotent elements in the immeasurable past.

The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists,
not in an experimental demonstration (for the subject
is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its
general harmony with scientific thought. From con-
trast, moreover, it derives enormous relative cogency.
On the one side we have a theory (if it could with any
propriety be so called) derived, as were the theories
referred to at the beginning of this Address, not from
the study of nature, but from the observation of men — •
a theory which converts the Power whose garment is
seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned
after the human model, and acting by broken efforts as
man is seen to act. On the other side we have the
conception that all we see around us, and all we feel
within us — the phenomena of physical nature as well
as those of the human mind — have their unsearchable
roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an
infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation
of man. And even this span is only knowable in part.
We can trace the development of a nervous system,
and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation
and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that
they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a
vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the con-
nection between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is
here required which the human mind cannot command;
and the effort to solve the problem — to borrow a com-
parison from an illustrious friend of mine — is like that
of a man trying to lift himself by his own waist-
band. All that has been said in this discourse is to
be taken in connection with this fundamental truth.

THE BELFAST ADDKESS.

197

When ‘ nascent senses ’ are spoken of, when ‘ the dif-
ferentiation of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all over ’
is spoken of, and when these possessions and processes
are associated with ‘ the modification of an organism
by its environment,’ the same parallelism, without
contact, or even approach to contact, is implied. Man
the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man
the subject. There is no motor energy in the human
intellect to carry it, without logical rupture, from the
one to the other.

§ 9.

The doctrine of Evolution derives man, in his
totality, from the interaction of organism and environ-
ment through countless ages past. The Human Under-
standing, for example, — that faculty which Mr. Spencer
has turned so skilfully round upon its own antecedents
— is itself a result of the play between organism and
environment through cosmic ranges of time. Never,
surely, did prescription plead so irresistible a claim.
But then it comes to pass that, over and above his
understanding, there are many other things appertain-
ing to man, whose prescriptive rights are quite as
strong as those of the understanding itself. It is a
result, for example, of the play of organism and en-
vironment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are
bitter ; that the smell of henbane differs from the
perfume of a rose. Such facts of consciousness (for
which, by the way, no adequate reason has ever been
rendered) are quite as old as the understanding ; and
many other things can boast an equally ancient origin.
Mr. Spencer at one place refers to that most powerful
of passions — the amatory passion — as one which, when
it first occurs, is antecedent to all relative experience
whatever ; and we may press its 'claim as being at least

198

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

as ancient, and as valid., as that of the understanding
itself. Then there are such tilings woven into the
texture of man as the feeling of Awe, Reverence,
Wonder — and not alone the sexual love just referred to,
but the love of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in
Nature, Poetry, and Art. There is also that deep-set
feeling, which, since the earliest dawn of history, and
probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated
itself in the Religions of the world. You, who have
escaped from these religions into the high-and-dry
light of the intellect, may deride them ; but in so
doing you deride accidents of form merely, and fail to
touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in
the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable
satisfaction is the problem of problems at the present
hour. And grotesque in relation to scientific culture
as many of the religions of the world have been and
are — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privi-
leges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have
been, and would, if they could, be again — it will be
wise to recognise them as the forms of a force, mis-
chievous if permitted to intrude on the region of
objective knowledge, over which it holds no command,
but capable of adding, in the region of poetry and
emotion, inward completeness and dignity to man.

Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin
and as high a source as intelligence, and it equally
demands its range of play. The wise teacher of
humanity will recognise the necessity of meeting this
demand, rather than of resisting it on account of errors
and absurdities of form. What we should resist, at all
hazards, is the attempt made in the past, and now
repeated, to found upon this elemental bias of man s
nature a system which should exercise despotic swa)
over his intellect. I have no fear of such a consurn-

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

199

mation. Science has already to some extent leavened
the world; it will leaven it more and more. I
should look upon the mild light of science breaking in
upon the minds of the youth of Ireland, and strengthen-
ing gradually to the perfect day, as a surer check to
any intellectual or spiritual tyranny which may threaten
this island, than the laws of princes or the swords of
emperors. We fought and won our battle even in the
Middle Ao-es : should we doubt the issue ot another

o

conflict with our broken foe ?

The impregnable position of science may be de-
scribed in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest
from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory.
All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon the
domain of science must, in so far as they do this,
submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of con-
trolling it. Acting otherwise proved always disastrous in
the past, and it is simply fatuous to-day. Every system
which would escape the fate of an organism too rigid to
adjust itself to its environment, must be plastic to the
extent that the growth of knowledge demands. When
this truth has been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be
relaxed, exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed
essential will be dropped, and elements now rejected
will be assimilated. The lifting of the life is the
essential point ; and as long as dogmatism, fanaticism,
and intolerance are kept out, various modes of leverage
may be employed to raise life to a higher level.

Science itself not unfrequently derives motive power
from an ultra-scientific source. Some of its greatest
discoveries have been made under the stimulus of a
non-scientific ideal. This was the case among the
ancients, and it has been so amongst ourselves. Mayer,
Joule, and Colding, whose names are associated with
the greatest of modern generalisations, were thus

200

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

influenced. With his usual insight, Lange at one
place remarks, that ‘ it is not always the objectively
correct and intelligible that helps man most, or leads
most quickly to the fullest and truest knowledge. As
the sliding body upon the brachystochrone reaches its
end sooner than by the straighter road of the inclined
plane, so, through the swing of the ideal, we often
arrive at the naked truth more rapidly than by the
processes of the understanding.’ Whewell speaks of
enthusiasm of temper as a hindrance to science ; but
he means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There is
a strong and resolute enthusiasm in which science
finds an ally ; and it is to the lowering of this fire,
rather than to the diminution of intellectual insight,
that the lessening productiveness of men of science,
in their mature years, is to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle
sought to detach intellectual achievement from moral
force. He gravely erred ; for without moral force to
whip it into action, the achievement of the intellect
would be poor indeed.

It has been said by its opponents that science
divorces itself from literature ; but the statement, like
so many others, arises from lack of knowledge. A
glance at the less technical writings of its leaders —
of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its Du Bois-Beymond
— would show what breadth of literary culture they
command. Where among modern writers can. you find
their superiors in clearness and vigour of literary style ?
Science desires not isolation, but freely combines with
every effort towards the bettering of man’s estate.
Single-handed, and supported, not by outward sympathy,
but by inward force, it has built at least one great
wing of the many-mansioned home which man in his
totality demands. And if rough walls and protruding
rafter-ends indicate that on one side the edifice is still

THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

201

incomplete, it is only by wise combination of the parts
required, with those already irrevocably built, that
we can hope for completeness. There is no necessary
incongruity between what has been accomplished and
what remains to be done. The moral glow of Socrates,
which we all feel by ignition, has in it nothing incom-
patible with the physics of Anaxagoras which he so
much scorned, but which he would hardly scorn to-day.
And here I am reminded of one among us, hoary, but
still strong, whose prophet-voice some thirty years ago,
far more than any other of this age, unlocked whatever
of life and nobleness lay latent in its most gifted minds
— one fit to stand beside Socrates or the Maccabean
Eleazar, and to dare and suffer all that they suffered
and dared — fit, as he once said of Fichte, c to have
been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of
Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe.’ With
a capacity to grasp physical principles which his friend
Goethe did not possess, and which eVen total lack of
exercise has not been able to reduce to atrophy, it is
the world’s loss that he, in the vigour of his years, did
not open his mind and sympathies to science, and
make its conclusions a portion of his message to man-
kind. Marvellously endowed as he was — equally
equipped on the side of the Heart and of the Under-
standing— he might have done much towards teaching
us how to reconcile the claims of both, and to enable
them in coming times to dwell together, in unity of
spirit and in the bond of peace.

And now the end is come. With more time, or
greater strength and knowledge, what has been here said
might have been better said, while worthy matters, here
omitted, might have received fit expression. But there
would have been no material deviation from the views

202

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

set forth. As regards myself, they are not the growth
of a day ; and as regards you, I thought you ought to
know the environment which, with or without your
consent, is rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to
which some adjustment on your part may be necessary.
A hint of Hamlet’s, however, teaches us how the
troubles of common life may be ended ; and it is
perfectly possible for you and me to purchase intel-
lectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The
world is not without refuges of this description ; nor
is it wanting in persons who seek their shelter, and try
to persuade others to do the same. The unstable and
the weak have yielded and will yield to this persuasion,
and they to whom repose is sweeter than the truth.
But I would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter,
and to scorn the base repose — to accept, if the choice
be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the
breezy leap of the torrent before the foetid stillness of
the swamp. In* the course of this Address I have
touched on debatable questions, and led you over what
will be deemed dangerous ground — and this partly with
the view of telling you that, as regards these questions,
science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not
to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and
Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong. Here I
should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain that
these views will undergo modification. But the point
is, that, whether right or wrong, we claim the right to
discuss them. For science, however, no exclusive claim
is here made ; you are not urged to erect it into an
idol. The inexorable advance of man’s understanding
in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims
of his moral and emotional nature, which the under-
standing can never satisfy, are here equally set forth.
The world embraces not only a Netwon, but a Slink-

THE BELFAST ADDEESS.

203

speare — not only a Boyle, but a Raphael — not only a
Kant, but a Beethoven — not only a Darwin, but a
Carlyle. Not in each of these, but in all, is human
nature whole. They are not opposed, but supplemen-
tary— not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And
if, unsatisfied with them all, the human mind, with
the yearning- of a pilgrim for his distant home, will
still turn to the Mystery from which it has emerged,
seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and
faith ; so long as this is done, not only without intole-
rance or bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened
recognition that ultimate fixity of conception is here
unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be
held free to fashion the mystery in accordance with
its own needs — then, casting aside all the restrictions
of Materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the
noblest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing
faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man.
Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me to
handle, but which will assuredly be handled by the
loftiest minds, when you and I, like streaks of morn-
ing cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of
the past.

204

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

X.

ATOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

1874.

nnHE world has been frequently informed of late that
X I have raised up against myself a host of enemies ;
and considering, with few exceptions, the deliverances of
the Press, and more particularly of the religious Press, I
am forced to admit that the statement is only too true.
I derive some comfort, nevertheless, from the reflection
of Diogenes, transmitted to us by Plutarch, that 4 he
who would he saved must have gocd friends or violent
enemies ; and that he is best off who possesses both.’
This ‘ best ’ condition, I have reason to believe, is mine.

Reflecting on the fraction I have read of recent
remonstrances, appeals, menaces, and judgments — cover-
ing not only the world that now is, but that which is
to come — I have noticed with mournful interest how
trivially men seem to be influenced by what they call
their religion, and how potently by that ‘nature ’ which
it is the alleged province of religion to eradicate or
subdue. From fair and manly argument, from the ten-
derest and holiest sympathy on the part of those who
desire my eternal good, I pass by many gradations,
through deliberate unfairness, to a spirit of bitterness,
which desires with a fervour inexpressible in words my
eternal ill. Now, were religion the potent factor, we
might expect a homogeneous utterance from those pro-

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

205

fessing a common creed, while, if human nature be the
really potent factor, we may expect utterances as hetero-
geneous as the characters of men. As a matter of fact
we have the latter; suggesting to my mind that the
common religion, professed and defended by these
different people, is merely the accidental conduit through
which they pour their own tempers, lofty or low, cour-
teous or vulgar, mild or ferocious, as the case may be.
Pure abuse, however, as serving no good end, I have,
wherever possible, deliberately avoided reading, wishing,
indeed, to keep, not only hatred, malice, and unchar-
itableness, but even every trace of irritation, far away
from my side of a discussion which demands not only
good-temper, but largeness, clearness, and many-sided-
ness of mind, if it is to guide us to even provisional
solutions.

It has been stated, with many variations of note and
comment, that in the Address as subsequently pub-
lished by Messrs. Longman I have retracted opinions
uttered at Belfast. A Roman Catholic writer is specially
strong upon this point. Startled by the deep chorus of
dissent which my £ dazzling fallacies ’ have evoked, I am
now trying to retreat. This he will by no means tolerate.

4 It is too late now to seek to hide from the eyes of
mankind one foul blot, one ghastly deformity. Pro-
fessor Tyndall has himself told us how and where this
Address of his was composed. It was written among
the glaciers and the solitudes of the Swiss mountains.
It was no hasty, hurried, crude production ; its every
sentence bore marks of thought and care.’

My critic intends to be severe : he is simply just.
In the 4 solitudes ’ to which he refers I worked with
: deliberation, endeavouring even to purify my intel-
' lect by disciplines similar to those enjoined by his
own Church for the sanctification of the soul. I tried.

206

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

moreover, in my ponderings to realise not only the law-
ful, but the expedient ; and to permit no fear to act
upon my mind, save that of uttering a single word on
which I could not take my stand, either in this or in
any other world.

Still my time was so brief, the difficulties arising
from my isolated position were so numerous, and my
thought and expression so slow, that, in a literary point
of view, I halted, not only behind the ideal, but behind
the possible. Hence, after the delivery of the Address,
I went over it with the desire, not to revoke its prin-
ciples, but to improve it verbally, and above all to
remove any word which might give colour to the notion
of ‘ crudeness, hurry, or haste.’

In connection with the charge of Atheism my critic
refers to the Preface to the second issue of the Belfast
Address : ‘ Christian men,’ I there say, ‘ are proved by
their writings to have their hours of weakness and of
doubt, as well as their hours of strength and of convic-
tion ; and men like myself share, in their own way,
these variations of mood and tense. Were the religious
moods of many of my assailants the only alternative
ones, I do not know how strong the claims of the doc-
trine of “ Material Atheism ” upon my allegiance might
be. Probably they would be very strong. But, as it is,
I have noticed during years of self-observation that it
is not in hours of clearness and vigour that this doc-
trine commends itself to my mind ; that in the presence
of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and
disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in
which we dwell, and of which we form a part.’

With reference to this honest and reasonable utter-
ance my censor exclaims, ‘ This is a most remarkable
passage. Much as we dislike seasoning polemics with
strong words, we assert that this Apology only tends to

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 207

affix with links of steel to the name of Professor Tyndall,
the dread imputation against which he struggles.’

Here we have a very fair example of subjective re-
ligious vigour. But my quarrel with such exhibitions
is that they do not always represent objective fact. No
atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion from
the human heart. Logic cannot deprive us of life, and
religion is life to the religious. As an experience ot
consciousness it is beyond the assaults of logic. But
the religious life is often projected in external forms —
I use the word in its widest sense — and this embodi-
ment of the religious sentiment will have to bear more
and more, as the world become more enlightened, the
stress of scientific tests. We must be careful of pro-
jecting into external nature that which belongs to
ourselves. My critic commits this mistake : he feels,
and takes delight in feeling, that I am struggling, and
he obviously experiences the most exquisite pleasures of
4 the muscular sense ’ in holding me down. His feelings
are as real, as if his imagination of what mine are were
equally real. His picture of my 4 struggles ’ is, how-
ever, a mere delusion. I do not struggle. I do not
fear the charge of Atheism ; nor should I even disavow
it, in reference to any definition of the Supreme which
he, or his order, would be likely to frame. His 4 links ’
and his 4 steel ’ and his 4 dread imputations ’ are, there-
fore, even more unsubstantial than my 4 streaks of
morning cloud,’ and they may be permitted to vanish
together.

These minor and more purely personal matters at an
end, the weightier allegation remains, that at Belfast I
misused my position by quitting the domain of science,
and making an unjustifiable raid into the domain of
theology. This I fail to see. Laying aside abuse, I

208

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

hope my accusers will consent to reason with me. Is it
not lawful for a scientific man to speculate on the ante-
cedents of the solar system ? Did Kant, Laplace, and
William Herschel quit their legitimate spheres, when
they prolonged the intellectual vision beyond the
boundary of experience, and propounded the nebular
theory ? Accepting that theory as probable, is it not
permitted to a scientific man to follow up, in idea, the
series of changes associated with the condensation of the
nebulas ; to picture the successive detachment of planets
and moons, and the relation of all of them to the sun ?
If I look upon our earth, with its orbital revolution
and axial rotation, as one small issue of the process
which made the solar system what it is, will any theo-
logian deny my right to entertain and express this
theoretic view ? Time was when a multitude of theolo-
gians would have been found to do so — when that arch-
enemy of science which now vaunts its tolerance would
have made a speedy end of the man who might venture
to publish any opinion of the kind. But, that time,
unless the world is caught strangely slumbering, is for
ever past.

As regards inorganic nature, then, we may traverse,
without let or hindrance, the whole distance which
separates the nebulae from the worlds of to-day. But
only a few years ago this now conceded ground of
science was theological ground. I could by no means
regard this as the final and sufficient concession of
theology ; and, at Belfast, I thought it not only my
right but my duty to state that, as regards the organic
world, we must enjoy the freedom which we have
already won in regard to the inorganic. I could not
discern the shred of a title -deed which gave any man, or
any class of men, the right to open the door of one of
these worlds to the scientific searcher, and to close the

APOLOGY FOR THE BELE'AST ADDRESS. 209

other against him. And I considered it frankest, wisest,
and in the long run most conducive to permanent peace,
to indicate, without evasion or reserve, the ground that
belongs to Science, and to which she will assuredly
make good her claim.

I have been reminded that an eminent predecessor
of mine in the Presidential chair, expressed a totally
different view of the Cause of things from that enun-
ciated by me. In doing so he transgressed the bounds
of science at least as much as I did ; but nobody raised
an outcry against him. The freedom he took I claim.
And looking at what I must regard as the extrava-
gances of the religious world ; at the very inadequate
and foolish notions concerning this universe which are
entertained by the majority of our authorised religious
teachers ; at the waste of energy on the part of good
men over things unworthy, if I may say it without dis-
courtesy, of the attention of enlightened heathens ;
the fight about the fripperies of Ritualism, and the
verbal quibbles of the Athanasian Creed ; the forcing on
the public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages ; the dating
of historic epochs from the definition of the Immaculate
Conception ; the proclamation of the Divine Glories of
the Sacred Heart — standing in the midst of these chi-
meras, which astound all thinking men, it did not
appear to me extravagant to claim the public tolerance
for an hour and a half, for the statement of more reason-
able views — views more in accordance with the verities
which science has brought to light, and which many
weary souls would, I thought, welcome with gratifica-
tion and relief.

But to come to closer quarters. The expression to
which the most violent exception has been taken is
this : c Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel
i bound to make before you is, that I prolong the visiou

VOL. II. p

210

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

backward across the boundary of the experimental
evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our
ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence
for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium,
the promise and potency of every form and quality of
life.’ To call it a 4 chorus of dissent,’ as my Catholic
critic does, is a mild way of describing the storm of
opprobrium with which this statement has been assailed.
But the first blast of passion being past, I hope I may
again ask my opponents to consent to reason. First of
all, I am blamed for crossing the boundary of the ex-
perimental evidence. This, I reply, is the habitual
action of the scientific mind — at least of that portion of
it which applies itself to physical investigation. Our
theories of light, heat, magnetism, and electricity, all
imply the crossing of this boundary. My paper on the
4 Scientific Use of the Imagination,’ and my 4 Lectures
on Light,’ illustrate this point in the amplest manner ;
and in the Article entitled ‘Matter and Force’ in the
present volume I have sought, incidentally, to make
clear, that in physics the experiential incessantly leads
to the ultra-experiential ; that out of experience there
always grows something finer than mere experience, and
that in their different powers of ideal extension consists,
for the most part, the difference between the great and
the mediocre investigator. The kingdom of science,
then, cometh not by observation and experiment alone,
but is completed by fixing the roots of observation and
experiment in a region inaccessible to both, and in
dealing with which we are forced to fall back upon the
picturing power of the mind.

Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does
not, in the abstract, constitute a sufficient ground for
censure. There must have been something in my par-
ticular mode of crossing it which provoked this tremen-
dous 4 chorus of dissent.’

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 211

Let us calmly reason the point out. I hold the
nebular theory as it was held by Kant, Laplace, and
William Herschel, and as it is held by the best scien-
tific intellects of to-day. According to it, our sun and
planets were once diffused through space as an impal-
pable haze, out of which, by condensation, came the
solar system. What caused the haze to condense ?
Loss of heat. What rounded the sun and planets ?
That which rounds a tear — molecular force. For aeons,
the immensity of which overwhelms man’s conceptions,
the earth was unfit to maintain what we call life. It is
now covered with visible living things. They are not
formed of matter different from that of the earth
around them. They are, on the contrary, bone of its
bone, and flesh of its flesh. How were they intro-
duced ? Was life implicated in the nebula — as part, it
may be, of a vaster and wholly Unfathomable Life ; or
is it the work of a Being standing outside the nebula,
who fashioned it, and vitalised it ; but whose own
origin and ways are equally past finding out ? As far
as the eye of science has hitherto ranged through nature,
no intrusion of purely creative power into any series of
phenomena has ever been observed. The assumption of
such a power to account for special phenomena, though
often made, has always proved a failure. It is opposed
to the very spirit of science ; and I therefore assumed
the responsibility of holding up, in contrast with it,
that method of nature which it has been the vocation
and triumph of science to disclose, and in the applica-
tion of which we can alone hope for further light.
Holding, then, that the nebulae and the solar system,
life included, stand to each other in the relation of the
germ to the finished organism, I reaffirm here, not
arrogantly, or defiantly, but without a shade of indis-
tinctness, the position laid down at Belfast.

212

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Not with the vagueness belonging to the emotions,
hut with the definiteness belonging to the understand-
ing, the scientific man has to put to himself these
questions regarding the introduction of life upon the
earth. He will be the last to dogmatise upon the sub-
ject, for he knows best that certainty is here for the
present unattainable. His refusal of the creative hypo-
thesis is less an assertion of knowledge than a protest
against the assumption of knowledge which must long,
if not for ever, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is
the source of perpetual confusion upon earth. With a
mind open to conviction he asks his opponents to show
him an authority for the belief they so strenuously and
so fiercely uphold. They can do no more than point to
the Book of Gienesis, or some other portion of the Bible.
Profoundly interesting, and indeed pathetic, to me are
those attempts of the opening mind of man to appease
its hunger for a Cause. But the Book of Grenesis has
no voice in scientific questions. To the grasp of geo-
logy, which it resisted for a time, it at length yielded
like potter’s clay ; its authority as a system of cos-
mogony being discredited on all hands, by the aban-
donment of the obvious meaning of its writer. It is a
poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect
it is for ever beautiful : in the latter aspect it has been,
and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurt-
ful. To knowledge its value has been negative, leading,
in rougher ages than ours, to physical, and even in our
own 4 free ’ age to moral, violence.

No incident connected with the proceedings at Bel-
fast is more instructive than the deportment of the
Catholic hierarchy of Ireland ; a body usually too wise
to confer notoriety upon an adversary by imprudently
denouncing him. The ‘ Times,’ to which I owe a great

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

213

deal on the score of fair play, where so much has been
unfair, thinks that the Irish Cardinal, Archbishops, and
Bishops, in a recent manifesto, adroitly employed a
weapon which I, at an unlucky moment, placed in their
hands. The antecedents of their action cause me to
regard it in a different light; and a brief reference to
these antecedents will, I think, illuminate not only
their proceedings regarding Belfast, but other doings
which have been recently noised abroad.

Before me lies a document bearing the date of
November 1873, which, after appearing for a moment,
unaccountably vanished from public view. It is a
Memorial addressed, by Seventy of the Students and
Ex-students of the Catholic University in Ireland, to the
Episcopal Board of the University ; and it constitutes
the plainest and bravest remonstrance ever addressed by
Irish laymen to their spiritual pastors and masters. It
expresses the profoundest dissatisfaction with the curri-
culum marked out for the students of the University ;
setting forth the extraordinary fact that the lecture-list
for the faculty of Science, published a month before
they wrote, did not contain the name of a single Pro-
fessor of the Physical or Natural Sciences.

The memorialists forcibly deprecate this, and dwell
upon the necessity of education in science : 4 The distin-
guishing mark of this age is its ardour for science. The
natural sciences have, within the last fifty years, be-
come the chiefest study in the world ; they are in our
time pursued with an activity unparalleled in the his-
tory of mankind. Scarce a year now passes without
some discovery being made in these sciences which, as
with the touch of the magician’s wand, shivers to atoms
theories formerly deemed unassailable. It is through
the physical and natural sciences that the fiercest as-
saults are now made on our religion. No more deadly

214

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

weapon is used against our faith than the facts incon-
testably proved by modern researches in science.’

Such statements must be the reverse of comfortable
to a number of gentlemen who, trained in the philo-
sophy of Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the
unquestioning submission of all other sciences to their
divine science of Theology. But this is not all :
‘ One thing seems certain,’ say the memorialists, viz.,
‘ that if chairs for the physical and natural sciences
be not soon founded in the Catholic University, very
many young men will have their faith exposed to dan-
gers which the creation of a school of science in the
University would defend them from. For our genera-
tion of Irish Catholics are writhing under the sense of
their inferiority in science, and are determined that such
inferiority shall not long continue : and so, if scientific
training be unattainable at our University, they will
seek it at Trinity or at the Queen’s Colleges, in not one
of which is there a Catholic Professor of Science.’

Those who imagined the Catholic University at
Kensington to be due to the spontaneous recognition, on
the part of the Roman hierarchy, of the intellectual
needs of the age, will derive enlightenment from this,
and still more from what follows : for the most formid-
able threat remains. To the picture of Catholic stu-
dents seceding to Trinity and the Queen’s Colleges, the
memorialists add this darkest stroke of all : ‘ They will,
in the solitude of their own homes, unaided by any
guiding advice, devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin,
Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell ; works innocuous if studied
under a professor who would point out the difference
between established facts and erroneous inferences, but
which are calculated to sap the faith of a solitary stu-
dent, deprived of a discriminating judgment to which
he could refer for a solution of his difficulties.’

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 215

In the light of the knowledge given by this
courageous memorial, and ol similar knowledge other-
wise derived, the recent Catholic manifesto did not at
all strike me as a chuckle over the mistake of a mala-
droit adversary, but rather as an evidence ol profound
uneasiness on the part of the Cardinal, the Archbishops,
and the Bishops who signed it. They acted towards the
Students’ Memorial, however, with their accustomed prac-
tical wisdom. As one concession to the spirit which it
embodied, the Catholic University at Kensington was
brought forth, apparently as the effect of spontaneous
inward force, and not of outward pressure becoming
too formidable to be successfully opposed.

The memorialists point with bitterness to the fact,
that ‘ the name of no Irish Catholic is known in con-
nection with the physical and natural sciences.’ But
this, they ought to know, is the complaint of free and
cultivated minds wherever a Priesthood exercises domi-
nant power. Precisely the same complaint has been
made with respect to the Catholics of Germany. The
great national literature and the scientific achievements
of that country, in modern times, are almost wholly the
work of Protestants. A vanishingly small fraction of
it only is derived from members of the Roman Church,
although the number of these in Grermany is at least
as great as that of the Protestants. 4 The question
arises,’ says a writer in an able German periodical,
‘ what is the cause of a phenomenon so humiliating to
the Catholics ? It cannot be referred to want of
natural endowment due to climate (for the Protestants
of Southern Grermany have contributed powerfully to
the creations of the German intellect), but purely to
outward circumstances. And these are readily dis-
covered in the pressure exercised for centuries by the
Jesuitical system, which has crushed out of Catholics

216

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

every tendency to free mental productiveness.’ It is,
indeed, in Catholic countries that the weight of Ultra-
montanism has been most severely felt. It is in such
countries that the very finest spirits, who have dared,
without quitting their faith, to plead for freedom or
reform, have suffered extinction. The extinction, how-
ever, was more apparent than real, and Hermes, Hirscher,
and Gunther, though individually broken and subdued,
prepared the way, in Bavaria, for the persecuted but
unflinching Frohschammer, for Bollinger, and for the
remarkable liberal movement of which Bollinger is the
head and guide.

Though moulded for centuries to an obedience un-
paralleled in any other country, except Spain, the Irish
intellect is beginning to show signs of independence ;
demanding a diet more suited to its years than the
pabulum of the Middle Ages. As for the recent mani-
festo in which Pope, Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops
are united in one grand anathema, its character and
fate are shadowed forth by the Vision of Nebuchadnezzar
recorded in the Book of Baniel. It resembles the
image, whose form was terrible, but the gold, and silver,
and brass, and iron of which rested upon feet of clay.
And a stone smote the feet of clay ; and the iron, and
the brass, and the silver, and the gold, were broken
in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the
summer threshing-floors, and the wind carried them
away.

Monsignor Capel has recently been good enough
to proclaim at once the friendliness of his Church
towards true science, and her right to determine what
true science is. Let us dwell for a moment on the
proofs of her scientific competence. When Halley’s
comet appeared in 1456 it was regarded as the har-
binger of God’s vengeance, the dispenser of war, pesti-

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 217

lence, and famine, and by order of the Pope the church
bells of Europe were rung to scare the monster away.
An additional daily prayer was added to the supplica-
tions of the faithful. The comet in due time dis-
appeared, and the faithful were comforted by the
assurance that, as in previous instances relating to
eclipses, droughts, and rains, so also as regards this
i nefarious ’ comet, victory had been vouchsafed to the
Church.

Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had taught the
heliocentric doctrine — that the earth revolves round
the sun. In the exercise of her right to determine
what true science is, the Church, in the Pontificate of
Paul V., stepped in, and by the mouth of the holy
Congregation of the Index, delivered, on March 5,
1616, the following decree : —

And ivhereas it hath also come to the knowledge
of the said holy congregation that the false Pytha-
gorean doctrine of the mobility of the earth and the
immobility of the sun , entirely opposed to Holy writ ,
uhich is taught by Nicolas Copernicus , is now pub-
lished abroad and received by many. In order that
this opinion may not further spread , to the damage
of Catholic truth , it is ordered that this and all other
boolcs teaching the like doctrine be suspended , and by
this decree they are all respectively suspended , for-
bidden, and condemned.

But why go back to 1456 and 1616 ? Far be it
from me to charge bygone sins upon Monsignor Capel,
were it not for the practices he upholds to-day. The
most applauded dogmatist and champion of the Jesuits
is, I am informed, Perrone. No less than thirty
editions of a work of his have been scattered abroad
for the healing of the nations. His notions of physical
astronomy are virtually those of 1456. He teaches

218

FBA^MENTS OF SCIENCE.

boldly that ‘ God does not rule by universal law . . .
that when God orders a given planet to stand still He
does not detract from any law passed by Himself, but
orders that planet to move round the sun for such and
such a time, then to stand still, and then again to move,
as His pleasure may be.’ Jesuitism proscribed Froh-
schammer for questioning its favourite dogma, that
every human soul was created by a direct supernatural
act of God, and for asserting that man, body and soul,
came from his parents. This is the system that now
strives for universal power ; it is from it, as Monsignor
Capel graciously informs us, that we are to learn what
is allowable in science, and what is not !

In the face of such facts, which might be multiplied
at will, it requires extraordinary bravery of mind, or a
reliance upon public ignorance almost as extraordinary,
to make the claims made by Monsignor Capel for his
Church.

Before me is a very remarkable letter addressed in
1875 by the Bishop of Montpellier to the Deans and Pro-
fessors of Faculties of Montpellier, in which the writer
very clearly lays down the claims of his Church. He had
been startled by an incident occurring in a course of
lectures on Physiology given by a professor, of -whose
scientific capacity there was no doubt, but who, it was
alleged, rightly or wrongly, had made his course the
vehicle of materialism. ‘Jeneme suis point donne,’ says
the Bishop, 4 la mission que je remplis au milieu de vous.
“ Personne, au temoignage de saint Paul, ne s’attribue
a soi-meme un pared honneur ; il y faut etre appele de
Dieu, comme Aaron.” Et pourquoi en est-il ainsi?
C’est parce que, selon le meme Apotre, nous devons
etre les ambassadeurs de Dieu; et il n’est pas dans
les usages, pas plus qu’il n’est dans la raison et le dioit,
qu’un envoy e s’accredite lui-meme. Mais, sijai iefu

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 219

d'En-Haut line mission ; si l’Eglise, au nom de Dieu
lui-meme, a souscrit mes lettres de creance, me sierait-
il de manquer aux instructions qu’elle m’a donnees et
d’entendre, en un sens different du sien. le role qu’elle
m’a confie ?

‘ Or, Messieurs, la sainte Eglise se croit investie du
droit absolu d’enseigner les homines ; elle se croit de-
positaire de la verite, non pas de la verite fragmentaire,
incomplete, melee de certitude et d hesitation, mais de
la verite totale, complete, au point de vue religieux.
Bien plus, elle est si sure de linfaillibilite que son
Fondateur clivin lui a communiquee, comme la dot
magnifique de leur indissoluble alliance, que, meine
dans l’ordre naturel, scientifique ou philosophique,
moral ou politique, elle n’admet pas qu’un systeme
puisse etre soutenu et adopte par des chretiens, s’il
contredit a des dogmes definis. Elle considere que la
negation volontaire et opiniatre d’un seul point de sa
doctrine rend coupable du peche d’heresie ; et elle
pense que toute heresie formelle, si on ne la rejette pas
courageusement avant de paraitre devant Dieu, entraine
avec soi la perte certaine de la grace et de l’eternite.’

The Bishop recalls those whom he addresses from
the false philosophy of the present to the philosophy of
the past, and foresees the triumph of the latter. 6 Avant
que le dix-neuvieme si^cle s’acheve, la vieille philo-
sophic scolastique aura repris sa place dans la juste
admiration du monde. II lui faudra pourtant bien du
temps pour guerir les maux de tout genre, causes par
son indigne rivale ; et pendant de longues annees encore,
ce nom de yphiloso'phie , le plus grand de la langue
humaine apres celui de religion , sera suspect aux ames qui
se souviendront de la science impie et materialiste de
Locke, de Condillac ou d’Helvetius. L’heure actuelle
est aux sciences naturelles : c’est maintenant l’instrument

220

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

de combat contre l’Eglise et contre toute foi religieuse.
Nous ne les redoutons pas.’ Further on the Bishop
warns his readers that everything can be abused.
Poetry is good, but in excess it may injure practical
conduct. 4 Les mathematiques sont excellentes : et Bos-
suet les a louees “ comme etant ce qui sert le plus a la
justesse du raisonnement ; ” mais si on s’accoutume
exclusivement a leur methode, rien de ce qui appartient
a l’ordre moral ne parait plus pouvoir etre demontre ; et
Fenelon a pu parler de V ensorcellement et des attraits
diaboliques de la geometric.’

The learned Bishop thus finally accentuates the
claims of the Church : — 4 Comme le definissait le Pape
Leon X, au cinquieme concile cecumenique de Latran,
“ Le vrai ne peut pas etre contraire a lui-meme : par
consequent, toute assertion contraire a une verite de
foi revelee est necessairement et absolument fausse."
II suit de la que, sans entrer dans l’examen scientifique
de telle ou telle question de physiologie, mais par la
seule certitude de nos dogmes, nous pouvons juger
du sort de telle ou telle hypothese, qui est une
machine de guerre anti-chretienne plutot qu’une con-
quete serieuse sur les secrets et les mysteres de la nature.
. . . C’est un dogme que l’homme a ete forme et faponne
des mains de Lieu. Done il est faux, heretique, con-
traire a la dignite du Createur et offensant pour son
chef-d’oeuvre, de dire que l’homme constitue Isiseptierne
espece des singes .... Heresie encore de dire que le
genre humain n’est pas sorti d’un seul couple, et qu’on
y peut compter jusqu’a douze races distinctes ! ’

The course of life upon earth, as far as Science can
see, has been one of amelioration — a steady advance on
the whole from the lower to the higher. The continued
effort of animated nature is to improve its condition

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

221

and raise itself to a loftier level. In man improvement
and amelioration depend largely upon the growth of
conscious knowledge, by which the errors of ignorance
are continually moulted, and truth is organised. It is
the advance of knowledge that has given a material-
istic colour to the philosophy of this age. Materi-
alism is therefore not a thing to be mourned over,
but to be honestly considered — accepted if it be wholly
true, rejected if it be wholly false, wisely sifted and
turned to account if it embrace a mixture of truth
and error. Of late years the study of the nervous
system, and its relation to thought and feeling, have
profoundly occupied enquiring minds. It is our duty
not to shirk — it ought rather to be our privilege to
accept — the established results of such enquiries, for
here assuredly our ultimate weal depends upon our
loyalty to the truth. Instructed as to the control which
the nervous system exercises over man’s moral and intel-
lectual nature, we shall be better prepared, not only to
mend their manifold defects, but also to strengthen and
purify both. Is mind degraded by this recognition of
its dependence ? Assuredly not. Matter, on the con-
trary, is raised to the level it ought to occupy, and
from which timid ignorance would remove it.

But the light is dawning, and it will become stronger
as time goes on. Even the Brighton “ Church Congress ”
affords evidence of this. From the manifold confusions
of that assemblage my memory has rescued two items,
which it would fain preserve : the recognition of a relation
between Health and Religion, and the address of the
Rev. Harry Jones. Out of the conflict of vanities his
words emerge wholesome and strong, because undrugged
by dogma, coming directly from the warm brain of one
who knows what practical truth means, and who has
faith in its vitality and inherent power of propagation.

222

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

I wonder whether he is less effectual in his ministry
than his more embroidered colleagues ? It surely be-
hoves our teachers to come to some definite under-
standing as to this question of health ; to see how, by
inattention to it, we are defrauded, negatively and
positively : negatively, by the privation of that ‘ sweet-
ness and light ’ which is the natural concomitant of
good health ; positively, by the insertion into life of
cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand corroding anxieties
which good health would dissipate. We fear and scorn
‘ materialism.’ But he who knew all about it, and
could apply his knowledge, might become the preacher
of a new gospel. Not, however, through the ecstatic
moments of the individual does such knowledge come,
but through the revelations of science, in connection
with the history of mankind.

Why should the Roman Catholic Church call glut-
tony a mortal sin ? Why should fasting occupy a place
in the disciplines of religion ? What is the meaning of
Luther’s advice to the young clergyman who came to
him, perplexed with the difficulties of predestination
and election, if it be not that, in virtue of its action
upon the brain, when wisely applied, there is moral and
religious virtue even in a hydro-carbon ? To use the
old language, food and drink are creatures of Gfod, and
have therefore a spiritual value. Through our neglect
of the monitions of a reasonable materialism we sin and
suffer daily. I might here point to the train of deadly
disorders over which science has given modern society
such control — disclosing the lair of the material enemy,
ensuring his destruction, and thus preventing that
moral squalor and hopelessness which habitually tread
on the heels of epidemics in the case of the poor.

Rising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg,
and the ecstasy of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

223

that psychical condition, obviously connected with the
nervous system and state of health, on which is based
the Vedic doctrine of the absorption of the individual
into the universal soul. Plotinus taught the devout
how to pass into a condition of ecstasy. Porphyry
complains of having been only once united to God in
eighty-six years, while his master Plotinus had been so
united six times in sixty years.1 A friend who knew
Wordsworth informs me that the poet, in some of his
moods, was accustomed to seize hold of an external
object to assure himself of his own bodily existence. As
states of consciousness such phenomena have an undis-
puted reality, and a substantial identity ; but they are
connected with the most heterogeneous objective concep-
tions. The subjective experiences are similar, because
of the similarity of the underlying organisations.

But for those who wish to look beyond the practical
facts, there will always remain ample room for specula-
tion. Take the argument of the Lucretian introduced
in the Belfast Address. As far as I am aware, not one
of my assailants has attempted to answer it. Some of
them, indeed, rejoice over the ability displayed by
Bishop Butler in rolling back the difficulty on his op-
ponent ; and they even imagine that it is the Bishop’s
own argument that is there employed. But the raising
of a new difficulty does not abolish — does not even
lessen — the old one, and the argument of the Lucretian
remains untouched by anything the Bishop has said or
can say.

And here it may be permitted me to add a word to
an important controversy now going on : and which

1 I recommend to the reader’s particular attention Dr. Draper’s
important work entitled, ‘History of the Conflict between Religion
and Science ’ (Messrs. H. S. King and Co.)

224

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

turns on the question : Do states of consciousness enter
as links into the chain of antecedence and sequence,
which give rise to bodily actions, and to other states
of consciousness ; or are they merely by-products,
which are not essential to the physical processes going
on in the brain ? Speaking for myself, it is certain
that I have no power of imagining states of conscious-
ness, interposed between the molecules of the brain,
and influencing the transference of motion among the
molecules. The thought e eludes all mental presenta-
tion ; ’ and hence the logic seems of iron strength which
claims for the brain an automatic action, uninfluenced
by states of consciousness. But it is, I believe, ad-
mitted by those who hold the automaton-theory, that
states of consciousness are produced by the marshalling
of the molecules of the brain : and this production of
consciousness by molecular motion is to me quite as
inconceivable on mechanical principles as the produc-
tion of molecular motion by consciousness. If, there-
fore, I reject one result, I must reject both. I,
however, reject neither, and thus stand in the pre-
sence of two Incomprehensibles, instead of one In-
comprehensible. While accepting fearlessly the facts
of materialism dwelt upon in these pages, I how my
head in the dust before that mystery of mind, which
has hitherto defied its own penetrative power, and
which may ultimately resolve itself into a demonstrable
impossibility of self-penetration.

But the secret is an open one — the practical moni-
tions are plain enough, which declare that on our deal-
ings with matter depend our weal and woe, physical
and moral. The state of mind which rebels against
the recognition of the claims of c materialism ’ is not
unknown to me. I can remember a time when I re-
garded my body as a weed, so much more highly did I

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 225

prize the conscious strength and pleasure derived from
moral and religious feeling — which, I may add, was
mine without the intervention of dogma. The error
was not an ignoble one, but this did not save it from
the penalty attached to error. Saner knowledge
taught me that the body is no weed, and that treated
as such it would infallibly avenge itself. Am I per-
sonally lowered by this change of front ? Not so. Give
me their health, and there is no spiritual experience
of those earlier years — no resolve of duty, or work of
mercy, no work of self-renouncement, no solemnity of
thought, no joy in the life and aspects of nature — that
would not still be mine ; and this without the least
reference or regard to any purely personal reward or
punishment looming in the future.

And now I have to utter a ‘ farewell ’ free from
bitterness to all my readers ; thanking my friends for
a sympathy more steadfast, I would fain believe, if less
noisy, than the antipathy of my foes ; and commending
to these a passage from Bishop Butler, which they have
either not read or failed to lay to heart. ‘ It seems,’
saith the Bishop, ‘ that men would be strangely head-
strong and self-willed, and disposed to exert themselves
with an impetuosity which would render society insup-
portable, and the living in it impracticable, were it not
for some acquired moderation and self-government,
some aptitude and readiness in restraining themselves,
and concealing their sense of things.’

VOL. Iti

a

226

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

XT

THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND THE

RIOR to the publication of the Fifth Edition of

these 4 Fragments’ my attention had been directed
by several estimable, and indeed eminent, persons, to
an essay by the Rev. James Martineau, as demanding
serious consideration at my hands. I tried to give the
essay the attention claimed for it, and published my views
of it as an Introduction to Part II. of the 4 Fragments.’
I there referred, and here again refer with pleasure, to
the accord subsisting between Mr. Martineau and myself
on certain points of biblical Cosmogony. 4 In so far,’
says he, 4 as Church belief is still committed to a given
Cosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to
scientific refutation.’ And again : 4 It turns out that
with the sun and moon and stars, and in and on the
earth, before and after the appearance of our race, quite
other things have happened than those which the sacred
Cosmogony recites.’ Once more : 4 The whole history
of the genesis of things Religion must surrender to the
Sciences.’ Finally, still more emphatically : 4 In the
investigation of the genetic order of things, Theology
is an intruder, and must stand aside.’ This expresses,
only in words of fuller pith, the views which I ventured
to enunciate in Belfast. 4 The impregnable position ot

BELFAST ADDRESS J

1 ‘ Fortnightly Review.’

RE V. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 227

Science,’ I there say, ‘may be stated in a few words.
We claim, and we shall wrest from Theology, the entire
domain of Cosmological theory.’ Thus Theology, so far
as it is represented by Mr. Martineau, and Science,
so far as I understand it, are in absolute harmony
here.

But Mr. Martineau would have just reason to com-
plain of me, if, by partial citation, I left my readers
under the impression that the agreement between us is
complete. At the opening of the eighty-ninth Session
of the Manchester New College, London, on October 6,
1874, he, its principal, delivered an Address bearing
the title 4 Beligion as affected by Modern Materialism ; ’
the references and general tone of which make evident
the depth of its author’s discontent with my previous
deliverance at Belfast. I find it difficult to grapple
with the exact grounds of this discontent. Indeed,
logically considered, the impression left upon my mind
by an essay of great aesthetic merit, containing many
passages of exceeding beauty, and many sentiments
which none but the pure in heart could utter as they
are uttered here, is vague and unsatisfactory. The
author appears at times so brave and liberal, at times
so timid and captious, and at times, if I dare say it,
so imperfectly informed, regarding the position he
assails.

At the outset of his Address Mr. Martineau states
with some distinctness his 4 sources of religious faith.’
They are two — 4 the scrutiny of Nature ’ and 4 the inter-
pretation of Sacred Books.’ It would have been a
theme worthy of his intelligence to have deduced from
these two sources his religion as it stands. But not
another word is said about the 4 Sacred Books.’ Having
swept with the besom of Science various 4 books ’ con-
temptuously away, he does not define the Sacred

228

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

residue ; much less give us the reasons why he deems
them sacred.1 * * His references to 4 Nature,’ on the other
hand, are magnificent tirades against Nature, intended,
apparently, to show the wholly abominable character of
man’s antecedents if the theory of evolution be true.
Here also his mood lacks steadiness. While joyfully
accepting, at one place, 4 the widening space, the
deepening vistas of time, the detected marvels of
physiological structure, and the rapid filling-in of the
missing links in the chain of organic life,’ he falls, at
another, into lamentation and mourning over the very
theory which renders 4 organic life ’ 4 a chain.’ He
claims the largest liberality for his sect, and avow3 its
contempt for the dangers of possible discovery. But
immediately afterwards he damages the claim, and
ruins all confidence in the avowal. He professes
sympathy with modem Science, and almost in the same
breath he treats, or certainly will be understood to
treat, the Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the
Conservation of Energy, as if they were a kind of
scientific thimble-riggery.

His ardour, moreover, renders him inaccurate ;
causing him to see discord between scientific men
where nothing but harmony reigns. In his celebrated
Address to the Congress of German Naturforscher,
delivered at Leipzig, three years ago, Du Bois-Reymond
speaks thus : 4 What conceivable connection subsists
between definite movements of definite atoms in my
brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand such
primordial, indefinable, undeniable, facts as these : I

1 Mr. Martineau’s use of the term ‘sacred’ is unintentionally

misleading. In his later essays we are taught that he does not

mean to restrict it to the Bible. He does not, however, mention

the ‘ books ’ beyond those of the Bible to which he would apply the
term. 1879.

HEY. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 229

feel pain or pleasure ; I experience a sweet taste, or
smell a rose, or hear an organ, or see something red.

. . It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable that a
number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen
atoms should be otherwise than indifferent as to their
own position and motion, past, present, or future. It
is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should result
from their joint action.’

This language, which was spoken in 1872, Mr.
Martineau 4 freely ’ translates, and quotes against me.
The act is due to misapprehension. Evidence is at
hand to prove that I employed similar language
twenty years ago. It is to be found in the c Satur-
day Review’ for 1860; but a sufficient illustra-
tion of the agreement between my friend Du Bois-
Reymond and myself, is furnished by the discourse on
‘ Scientific Materialism,’ delivered in 1868, then widely
circulated, and reprinted here. The reader who com-
pares the two discourses will see that the same line of
thought is pursued in both, and that perfect agreement
reigns between my friend and me. In the very Address
he criticises, Mr. Martineau might have seen that pre-
cisely the same position is maintained. A quotation
will prove this : — ‘ Thus far,’ I say, 6 our way is clear,
but now comes my difficulty. Your atoms are indivi-
dually without sensation, much more are they without
intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand
upon this problem ? Take your dead hydrogen atoms,
your dead oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your
dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and
all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which
the brain is formed. Imagine them separate and
sensationless ; observe them running together and form-
ing all imaginable combinations. This, as a purely
mechanical process, is seeable by the mind. But can

230

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how out of
that mechanical act, and from these individually dead
atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise ?
Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling of
dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of
billiard balls ? . . . I can follow a particle of musk
until it reaches the olfactory nerve ; I can follow the
waves of sound until their tremors reach the water of
the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti’s fibres in
motion ; I can also visualise the waves of aether as they
cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I am able
to pursue to the central organ the motion thus imparted
at the periphery, and to see in idea the very molecules
of the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is not
baffled by these physical processes. What baffles and
bewilders me is the notion that from these physical
tremors things so utterly incongruous with them as
sensation, thought, and emotion can be derived.’ It is
only a complete misapprehension of our true relation-
ship that could induce Mr. Martineau to represent Du
Bois-Reymond and myself as opposed to each other.

‘ The affluence of illustration,’ writes an able and
sympathetic reviewer of this essay, in the ‘ New York
Tribune,’ ‘ in which Mr. Martineau delights often
impairs the distinctness of his statements by diverting
the attention of the reader from the essential points of
his discussion to the beauty of his imagery, and thus
diminishes their power of conviction.’ To the beauties
here referred to I bear willing testimony ; but the
reviewer is strictly just in his estimate of their effect
upon my critic’s logic. The 4 affluence of illustration,
and the heat, and haze, and haste, generated by its
reaction upon Mr. Martineau’ s own mind, often pro-
duce vagueness where precision is the one thing needful
- — poetic fervour where we require judicial calm ; and

EEV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 231

practical unfairness where the strictest justice ought to
be, and I willingly believe is meant to be, observed.

In one of his nobler passages Mr. Martineau tells us
how the pupils of his college have been educated hither-
to : 4 They have been trained under the assumptions
(1) that the Universe which includes us and folds us
round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind ; (2) that
the world of our abode is the scene of a moral govern-
ment, incipient but not complete ; and (3) that the
upper zones of human affection, above the clouds of self
and passion, take us into the sphere of a Divine Com-
munion.' Into this over-arching scene it is that grow-
ing thought and enthusiasm have expanded to catch
their light and fire.’

Alpine summits seem to kindle above us as we read
these glowing words ; we see their beauty and feel their
life. At the close of one of the essays here printed,1 I
thus refer to the 4 Communion ’ which Mr. Martineau
calls 4 Divine ’ : 4 44 Two things,” said Immanuel Kant,
“fill me with awe — the starry heavens, and the sense
of moral responsibility in man.” And in his hours of
health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of
action has ceased, and the pause of reflection has set
in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed
by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hamper-
ing details of earth, it associates him with a power
which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which
he can neither analyse nor comprehend.’ Though
4 knowledge ’ is here disavowed, the 4 feelings ’ of Mr.
Martineau and myself are, I think, very much alike.
He, nevertheless, censures me — almost denounces me
— for referring Keligion to the region of Emotion.
Surely he is inconsistent here. The foregoing words
refer to an inward hue or temperature, rather than to

1 ‘ Scientific Use of tlie Imagination.’

232

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

an external object of thought. When I attempt to
give the Power which I see manifested in the Universe
an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away
from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I
dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun 4 He ’ re-
garding it ; I dare not call it a 6 Mind ; ’ I refuse to
call it even a 4 Cause.’ Its mystery overshadows me ;
but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames
which some of my neighbours try to make it fit, seem
to me to distort and desecrate it.

It is otherwise with Mr. Martineau, and hence his
discontent. He professes to Icnoiv where I only claim
to feel. He could make his contention good against
me if, by a process of verification, he would transform
his assumptions into 4 objective knowledge.’ But he
makes no attempt to do so. They remain assumptions
from the beginning of his Address to its end. And yet
he frequentl}' uses the word 4 unverified,’ as if it were
fatal to the position on which its incidence falls. 4 The
scrutiny of Nature ’ is one of his sources of 4 religious
faith : ’ what logical foothold does that scrutiny furnish,
on which any one of the foregoing three assumptions
could be planted ? Nature, according to his picturing,
is base and cruel : what is the inference to be drawn
regarding its Author ? If Nature be 4 red in tooth and
claw,’ who is responsible ? On a Mindless nature Mr.
Martineau pours the full torrent of his gorgeous in-
vective ; but could the 4 assumption ’ of 4 an Eternal
Mind ’ — even of a Beneficent Eternal Mind — render the
world objectively a whit less mean and ugly than it is ?
Not an iota. It is man’s feelings, and not external
phenomena, that are influenced by the assumption.
It adds not a ray of light nor a strain of music to the
objective sum of things. It does not touch the phe-
nomena of physical nature — storm, flood, or fire — nor

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 233

diminish by a pang "the bloody combats of the animal
world. But it does add the glow of religious emo-
tion to the human soul, as represented by Mr. Mar-
tineau. Beyond this I defy him to go ; and yet be
rashly — it might be said petulantly — kicks away the
only philosophic foundation on which it is possible for
him to build his religion.

He twits incidentally the modern scientific inter-
pretation of nature because of its want of cheerfulness.
‘ Let the new future,’ he says, ‘ preach its own gospel,
and devise, if it can, the means of making the tidings
glad' This is a common argument : 4 If you only knew
the comfort of belief ! ’ My reply is that I choose the
nobler part of Emerson, when, after various disenehant-
ments, he exclaimed, ‘ I covet truth ! ’ The gladness
of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really
competent to say this. Besides, ‘ gladness ’ is an emo-
tion, and Mr. Martineau theoretically scorns the emo-
tional. I am not, however, acquainted with a writer
who draws more largely upon this source, while mis-
taking it for something objective. ‘To reach the
Cause,’ he says, ‘ there is no need to go into the past,
as though being missed here, He could be found there.
But when once He has been apprehended by the proper
organs of divine apprehension, the whole life of
Humanity is recognised as the scene of His agency.’
That Mr. Martineau should have lived so long, thought
so much, and failed to recognise the entirely subjective
character of this creed, is highly instructive. His
‘ proper organs of divine apprehension ’ — given, we
must assume, to Mr. Martineau and his pupils, but
denied to many of the greatest intellects and noblest
men in this and other ages — lie at the very core of his
emotions.

In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely

234

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

emotional that he scorns the emotions ; it is when he
is most purely subjective that he rejects subjectivity.
He pays a just and liberal tribute to the character of
John »Stuart Mill. But in the light of Mill’s philosophy,
benevolence, honour, purity, having ‘ shrunk into mere
unaccredited subjective susceptibilities, have lost all
support from Omniscient approval, and all presumable
accordance with the reality of things.’ If Mr. Marti-
neau had given them any inkling of the process by
which he renders the ‘subjective susceptibilities’ objec-
tive, or how he arrives at an objective ground of
‘ Omniscient approval,’ gratitude from his pupils would
have been his just meed. But, as it is, he leaves them
lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after exciting a
desire which he is incompetent to appease.

‘ We are,’ he says, in another place, ‘ for ever shaping
our representations of invisible things into forms of
definite opinion, and throwing them to the front, as if
they were the photographic equivalent of our real faith.
It is a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the
essence of our religion never finds its way into these
frames of theory : as we put them together it slips away,
and, if we turn to pursue it, still retreats behind ; ever
ready to work with the will, to unbind and sweeten the
affections, and bathe the life with reverence, but re-
fusing to be seen, or to pass from a divine hue of think-
ing into a human pattern of thought.’ This is very
beautiful, and mainly so because the man who utters it
obviously brings it all out of the treasury of his own
heart. But the ‘ hue ’ and ‘ pattern ’ here so finely
spoken of, the former refusing to pass into the latter,
are neither more nor less than that ‘ emotion,’ on the one
band, and that ‘ objective knowledge,’ on the other,
which have drawn this suicidal fire from Mr. Marti-
neau’s battery.

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 235

I now come to one of the most serious portions of
Mr. Martineau’s pamphlet— serious far less on account
of its ‘ personal errors,’ than of its intrinsic gravity,
though its author has thought fit to give it a witty and
sarcastic tone. He analyses and criticises 4 the materi-
alist doctrine, which, in our time, is proclaimed with
so much pomp, and resisted with so much passion.
44 Matter is all I want,” says the physicist ; 44 give me its
atoms alone, and I will explain the universe.” ’ It is
thought, even by Mr. Martineau’s intimate friends,
that in this pamphlet he is answering me. I must
therefore ask the reader to contrast the foregoing
travesty with what I really do say regarding atoms : 4 1
do not think that he [the materialist] is entitled to
say that his molecular groupings and motions explain
everything. In reality, they explain nothing. The
utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of
phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in abso-
lute ignorance.’1 This is very different from saying,
4 Give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the uni-
verse.’ Mr. Martineau continues his dialogue with the
physicist : 4 44 Good,” he says ; 44 take as many atoms as
you please. See that they have all that is requisite to
Body [a metaphysical B], Being homogeneous extended
solids.” “That is not enough,” his physicist replies; “it
might do for Democritus and the mathematicians, but I
must have something more. The atoms must not only
be in motion, and of various shapes, but also of as many
kinds as there are chemical elements ; for how could I
ever get water if I had only hydrogen elements to work
with ? ” “ So be it,” Mr. Martineau consents to an-

swer, 44 only this is a considerable enlargement of your
specified datum [where, and by whom specified ?] — in
fact, a conversion of it into several ; yet, even at the

1 Address on ‘ Scientific Materialism.’

236

fragments of science.

cost oi its monism [put into it by Mr. Martineau], your
scheme seems hardly to gain its end ; for by what
manipulation of your resources will you, for example,
educe Consciousness ? ” ’

I his reads like pleasantry, but it deals with serious
things. For the last seven years the question here
proposed by Mr. Martineau, and my answer to it,
have been accessible to all. The question, in my
words, is briefly this : ‘ A man can say, “ I feel, I
think, I love,” but how does consciousness infuse itself
into the problem ? ’ And here is my answer : The
passage from the physics of the brain to the corre-
sponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted
that a definite thought and a definite molecular action
in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess
the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of
the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process
of reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear
together, but we do not know why. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated,
as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the
brain ; were we capable of following all their motions,
all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such
there be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the
corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should
be as far as ever from the solution of the problem,
“ How are these physical processes connected with the
facts of consciousness ? ” The chasm between the two
classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually
impassable.’ 1

Compare this with the answer which Mr. Martineau
puts into the mouth of his physicist, and with which I
am generally credited by Mr. Martineau’s readers, both

1 Bishop Butler’s reply to the Lucretian in the ‘ Belfast Address
is all in the same strain.

REV. JAMES MARTIN EAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 237

in England and America : “‘It [the problem of con-
sciousness] does not daunt me at all. Of coarse you
understand that all along my atoms have been affected
by gravitation and polarity ; and now I have only to
insist with Fechner on a difference among molecules :
there are the inorganic , which can change only their
place, like the particles in an undulation ; and there
are the organic , which can change their order , as in a
globule that turns itself inside out. With an adequate
number of these our problem will be manageable.”
‘‘Likely enough,” we may say [“ entirely unlikely,”
say I], “ seeing how careful you are to provide for all
emergencies ; and if any hitch should occur m the next
step, where you will have to pass from mere sentiency
to thought and will, you can again look in upon your
atoms, and fling among them a handful of Leibnitz’s
monads, to serve as souls in little, and be ready, in a
latent form, with that Vorstellungs-fahigkeit which our
picturesque interpreters of nature so much prize.” ’

‘ But surely,’ continues Mr. Martineau, ‘ you must
observe that this “ matter ” of yours alters its style with
every change of service : starting as a beggar with
scarce a rag of “ property ” to cover its bones, it turns
up as a prince when large undertakings are wanted.
“ We must radically change our notions of matter,”
says Professor Tyndall ; and then, he ventures to
believe, it will answer all demands, carrying “ the
promise and potency of all terrestrial life.” If the
measure of the required “ change in our notions ” had
been specified, the proposition would have had a real
meaning, and been susceptible of a test. It is easy
travelling through the stages of such an hypothesis ;
you deposit at your bank a round sum ere you start,
and, drawing on it piecemeal at every pause, complete
your grand tour without a debt.’

238 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

The last paragraph of this argument is forcibly and
ably stated. On it I am willing to try conclusions with
Mr. Martineau. I may say, in passing, that I share
his contempt for the picturesque interpretation of
nature, if accuracy of vision be thereby impaired. But
the term Vorstellungs-fahigkeit, as used by me, means
the power of definite mental presentation, of attaching
to words the corresponding objects of thought, and of
seeing these in their proper relations, without the
interior haze and soft penumbral borders which the
theologian loves. To this mode of ‘ interpreting
nature ’ I shall to the best of my ability now adhere.

Neither of us, I trust, will be afraid or ashamed to
begin at the alphabet of this question. Our first
effort must be to understand each other, and this
mutual understanding can only be ensured by begin-
ning low down. Physically speaking, however, we
need not go below the sea-level. Let us then travel
in company to the Caribbean Sea, and halt upon the
heated water. What is that sea, and what is the sun
that heats it ? Answering for myself, I say that they
are both matter. I fill a glass with the sea-water and
expose it on the deck of the vessel ; after some time the
liquid has all disappeared, and left a solid residue of
salt in the glass behind. We have mobility, invisi-
bility— apparent annihilation. In virtue of

The glad and secret aid

The sun unto the ocean paid,

the water has taken to itself wings and flown off as
vapour. From the whole surface of the Caribbean Sea
such vapour is rising : and now we must follow it — not
upon our legs, however, nor in a ship, nor even in a
balloon, but by the mind’s eye— in other words, by that
power of Yorstellung which Mr. Martineau knows so well,

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 239

and which he so justly scorns when it indulges in loose
practices.

Compounding, then, the northward motion of the
vapour with the earth’s axial rotation, we track our
fugitive through the higher atmospheric regions,
obliquely across the Atlantic Ocean to Western Europe,
and on to our familiar Alps. Here another wonderful
metamorphosis occurs. Floating on the cold calm air,
and in presence of the cold firmament, the vapour
condenses, not only to particles of water, but to
particles of crystalline water. These coalesce to stars
of snow, which fall upon the mountains in forms so
exquisite that, when first seen, they never fail to excite
rapture. As to beauty, indeed, they put the work of
the lapidary to shame, while as to accuracy they render
concrete the abstractions of the geometer. Are these
crystals ‘ matter ’ ? Without presuming to dogmatise,
I answer for myself in the affirmative.

Still, a formative 'power has obviously here come
into play which did not manifest itself in either the
liquid or the vapour. The question now is, Was not
the power 4 potential ’ in both of them, requiring only
the proper conditions of temperature to bring it into
action ? Again I answer for myself in the affirmative.
I am, however, quite willing to discuss with Mr.
Martineau the alternative hypothesis, that an impon-
derable formative soul unites itself with the substance
after its escape from the liquid state. If he ;should
espouse this hypothesis, then I should demand of him
an immediate exercise of that Vorstellungs-fahigkeit
with which, in my efforts to think clearly, I can never
dispense. I should ask, At what moment did the soul
come in ? Did it enter at once or by degrees ; perfect
from the first, or growing and perfecting itself con-
temporaneously with its own handiwork ? I should

240

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

also ask whether it is localised or diffused ? Does it
move about as a lonely builder, putting the bits of
solid water in their places as soon as the proper tem-
perature has set in ? or is it distributed through the
entire mass of the crystal? If the latter, then the
soul has the shape of the crystal ; but if the former,
then I should enquire after its shape. Has it legs or
arms? If not, I would ask it to be made clear to
me how a thing without these appliances can act so
perfectly the part of a builder ? (I insist on definition,
and ask unusual questions, if haply I might thereby
banish unmeaning words.) What were the condition
and residence of the soul before it joined the crystal ?
What becomes of it when the crystal is dissolved ?
Why should a particular temperature be needed before
it can exercise its vocation ? Finally, is the problem
before us in any way simplified by the assumption of
its existence? I think it probable that, after a full
discussion of the question, Mr. Martineau would agree
with me in ascribing the building power displayed in
the crystal to the bits of water themselves. At all
events, I should count upon his sympathy so far as to
believe that he would consider any one unmannerly
who would denounce me for rejecting this notion of a
separate soul, and for holding the snow-crystal to be
‘ matter.’

But then what an astonishing addition is here
made to the powers of matter ! Who would have
dreamt, without actually seeing its work, that such a
power was locked up in a drop of water ? All that we
needed to make the action of the liquid intelligible
was the assumption of Mr. Martin eau’s ‘ homogeneous
extended atomic solids,’ smoothly gliding over one
another. But had we supposed the water to be
nothing more than this, we should have ignorantly

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 241

defrauded it of an intrinsic architectural power, which
the art of man, even when pushed to its utmost degree
of refinement, is incompetent to imitate. I would
invite Mr. Martineau to consider how inappropriate his
figure of a fictitious bank deposit becomes under these
circumstances. The ‘ account current ’ of matter re-
ceives nothing at my hands which could be honestly
kept back from it. If, then, 4 Democritus and the
mathematicians ’ so defined matter as to exclude the
powers here proved to belong to it, they were clearly
wrong, and Mr. Martineau, instead of twitting me with
my departure from them, ought rather to applaud me
for correcting them.1

The reader of my small contributions to the litera-
ture which deals with the overlapping margins of
►Science and Theology, will have noticed how frequently
I quote Mr. Emerson. I do so mainly because in him
we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is
really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of
Science, past, present, or prospective. In his case
Poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver
brother Science by the hand, and cheers him with
immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions
are continually transmuted into the finer forms and
warmer hues of an ideal world. Our present theme is
touched upon in the lines —

The journeying atoms, primordial wholes

Firmly draw, firmly drive by their animate poles.

As regards veracity and insight these few words out-

1 Definition implies previous examination of the object defined,
and is open to correction or modification as knowledge of the objeot
increases. Such increased knowledge has radically changed our
conceptions of the luminiferous sether, converting its vibrations
from longitudinal into transvei'se. Such changes also Mr. Mar-
tineau’s conceptions of matter are doomed to undergo.

VOL. II. K

242

fkagments of science.

weigh, in my estimation, all the formal learning ex-
pended by Mr. Martineau in those disquisitions on
Force, where he treats the physicist as a conjuror,
and speaks so wittily of atomic polarity. In fact,
without this notion of polarity — this ‘ drawing ’ and
‘driving’ — this attraction and repulsion, we stand as
stupidly dumb before the phenomena of Crystallisation
as a Bushman before the phenomena of the Solar
System. The genesis and growth of the notion I have
endeavoured to make clear in my third Lecture on
Light, and in the article on ‘ Matter and Force ’ pub-
lished in this volume.

Our further course is here foreshadowed. A Sunday
or two ago I stood under an oak planted by Sir John
Moore, the hero of Corunna. On the ground near the
tree little oaklets were successfully fighting for life
with the surrounding vegetation. The acorns had
dropped into the friendly soil, and this was the result
of their interaction. What is the acorn ? what the
earth ? and what the sun, without whose heat and
light the tree could not become a tree, however rich
the soil, and however healthy the seed ? I answer for
myself as before — all ‘ matter.’ And the heat and
light which here play so potent a part are acknow-
ledged to be motions of matter. By taking something
much lower down in the vegetable kingdom than the
oak, we might approach much more nearly to the case
of crystallisation already discussed ; but this is not now
necessary.

If, instead of conceding the sufficiency of matter
here, Mr. Martineau should fly to the hypothesis of a
vegetative soul, all the questions before asked in relation
to the snow-star become pertinent. I would invite
him to go over them one by one, and consider what
replies he will make to them. He may retort by

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 243

asking me, ‘ Who infused the principle of life into the
tree ? ’ I say, in answer, that our present question is
not this, but another — not who made the tree, but
what is it ? Is there anything besides matter in the
tree ? If so, what, and where ? Mr. Martineau may
have begun by this time to discern that it is not
‘ picturesqueness, ’ but cold precision, that my Vorstel-
lungs-fahigkeit demands. How, I would ask, is this
vegetative soul to be presented to the mind ? where
did it flourish before the tree grew ? and what will
become of it when the tree is sawn into planks, or
consumed in fire ?

Possibly Mr. Martineau may consider the assumption
of this soul to be as untenable and as useless as I do.
But then if the power to build a tree be conceded to
pure matter, what an amazing expansion of our notions
of the ‘ potency of matter ’ is implied in the concession !
Think of the acorn, of the earth, and of the solar light
and heat — was ever such necromancy dreamt of as the
production of that massive trunk, those swaying boughs
and whispering leaves, from the interaction of these
three factors ? In this interaction, moreover, consists
what we call life. It will be seen that I am not in the
least insensible to the wonder of the tree ; nay, I should
not be surprised if, in the presence of this wonder, I
feel more perplexed and overwhelmed than Mr. Mar-
tineau himself.

Consider it for a moment. There is an experiment,
first made by Wheatstone, where the music of a piano
is transferred from its sound-board, through a thin
wooden rod, across several silent rooms in succession
and poured out at a distance from the instrument. The
strings of the piano vibrate, not singly, but ten at a
time. Every string subdivides, yielding not one note,

244

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

but a dozen. All these vibrations and subvibrations are
crowded together into a bit of deal not more than a
quarter of a square inch in section. Yet no note is
lost. Each vibration asserts its individual rights ; and
all are, at last, shaken forth into the air by a second
sound-board, against which the distant end of the rod
presses. Thought ends in amazement when it seeks
to realise the motions of that rod as the music flows
through it. I turn to my tree and observe its roots,
its trunk, its branches, and its leaves. As the rod
conveys the music, and yields it up to the distant air,
so does the trunk convey the matter and the motion —
the shocks and pulses and other vital actions — which
eventually emerge in the umbrageous foliage of the
tree. I went some time ago through the greenhouse
of a friend. He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches
of which were in some cases not much thicker than an
ordinary pin — hard, smooth, and cylindrical — often
leafless for a foot or more. But at the end of every
one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exuberant
beauty hidden within it, and broke forth into a mass of
fronds, almost large enough to fill the arms. We stand
here upon a higher level of the wonderful : we are
conscious of a music subtler than that of the piano,
passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issuing
in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the
‘ clustered magnificence ’ of the leaves. Does it lessen
my amazement to know that every cluster, and every
leaf — their form and texture — lie, like the music in the
rod, in the molecular structure of these apparently
insignificant stems ? Not so. Mr. Martineau weeps
for ‘ the beauty of the flower fading into a necessity.’
I care not whether it comes to me through necessity
or through freedom, my delight in it is all the same.
I see what he sees with a wonder superadded. To me,

REV. JAMES MARTI NEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 245

as to him, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed
like one of these.

I have spoken above as if the assumption of a
soul would save Mr. Martineau from the inconsistency
of crediting pure matter with the astonishing building
power displayed in crystals and trees. This, however,
would not be the necessary result ; for it would remain
to be proved that the soul assumed is not itself matter.
When a boy I learnt from Dr. Watts that the souls ot
conscious brutes are mere matter. And the man who
would claim for matter the human soul itself, would
find himself in very orthodox company. 4 All that is
created,’ says Fauste, a famous French bishop of the
fifth century, 4 is matter. The soul occupies a place ;
it is enclosed in a body ; it quits the body at death,
and returns to it at the resurrection, as in the case of
Lazarus ; the distinction between Hell and Heaven,
between eternal pleasures and eternal pains, proves that,
even after death, souls occupy a place and are corporeal.
God only is incorporeal.’ Tertullian, moreover, was
quite a physicist in the definiteness of his conceptions
regarding the soul. 4 The materiality of the soul,’ he
says, 4 is evident from the evangelists. A human soul
is there expressly pictured as suffering in hell ; it is
placed in the middle of a flame, its tongue feels a
cruel agony, and it implores a drop of water at the
hands of a happier soul. Wanting materiality, ’ adds
Tertullian, 4 all this would be without meaning .’ 1

1 The foregoing extracts, which M. Alglave recently brought to
light for the benefit of the Bishop of Orleans, are taken from the
sixth Lecture of the ‘ Cours d’Histoire Moderne ’ of that most
orthodox of statesmen, M. Guizot. ‘I could multiply,’ continues M.
Guizot, ‘these citations to infinity, and they prove that in the first
centuries of our era the materiality of the soul was an opinion not
only permitted, but dominant.’ Dr. Moriarty, and the synod which
he recently addressed, obviously forget their own antecedents.

246

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

I have glanced at inorganic nature— at the sea, and
the sun, and the vapour, and the snow-flake, and at
organic nature as represented by the fern and the oak.
That same sun which warmed the water and liberated
the vapour, exerts a subtler power on the nutriment
of the tree. It takes hold of matter wholly unfit for
the purposes of nutrition, separates its nutritive from
its non-nutritive portions, gives the former to the
vegetable, and carries the others away. Planted in
the earth, bathed by the air, and tended by the sun,
the tree is traversed by its sap, the cells are formed, the
woody fibre is spun, and the whole is woven to a
texture wonderful even to the naked eye, but a million-
fold more so to microscopic vision. Does consciousness
mix in any way with these processes ? No man can
tell. Our only ground for a negative conclusion is the
absence of those outward manifestations from which
feeling is usually inferred. But even these are not
entirely absent. In the greenhouses of Kew we may
see that a leaf can close, in response to a proper
stimulus, as promptly as the human fingers themselves :
and while there Dr. Hooker will tell us of the wondrous
fly-catching and fly-devouring power of the Dionsea.
No man can say that the feelings of the animal are
not represented by a drowsier consciousness in the
vegetable world. At all events, no line has ever been
drawn between the conscious and the unconscious ; for
the vegetable shades into the animal by such fine
gradations, that is impossible to say where the one ends
and the other begins.

In all such enquiries we are necessarily limited by
our own powers : we observe what our senses, armed

Their boasted succession from the early Church renders them the
direct offspring of a ‘ materialism ’ more ‘ brutal ’ than any ever
enunciated by me.

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 247

with the aids furnished by Science, enable us to observe ;
nothing more. The evidences as to consciousness in
fhe vegetable world depend wholly upon our capacity to
observe and weigh them. Alter the capacity, and the
evidence would alter too. Would that which to us is
a total absence of any manifestation of consciousness
be the same to a being with our capacities indefinitely
multiplied ? To such a being I can imagine not only
the vegetable, but the mineral world, responsive to the
proper irritants, the response differing only in degree
from those exaggerated manifestations, which, in virtue
of their magnitude, appeal to our weak powers of obser-
vation.

Our conclusion, however, must be based, not on
powers that we imagine, but upon those that we possess.
What do they reveal ? As the earth and atmosphere
offer themselves as the nutriment of the vegetable
world, so does the latter, which contains no constituent
not found in inorganic nature, offer itself to the animal
world. Mixed with certain inorganic substances —
water, for example — the vegetable constitutes, in the
long run, the sole sustenance of the animal. Animals
may be divided into two classes, the first of which
can utilise the vegetable world immediately, having-
chemical forces strong enough to cope with its most
refractory parts ; the second class use the vegetable
world mediately ; that is to say, after its finer portions
have been extracted and stored up by the first. But in
neither class have we an atom newly created. The
animal world is, so to say, a distillation through the
vegetable world from inorganic nature.

From this point of view all three worlds would con-
stitute a unity, in which I picture life as immanent
everywhere. Nor am I anxious to shut out the idea
that the life here spoken of, may be but a subordinate

248

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

part and function of a Higher Life, as the living
moving blood is subordinate to the living man. I resist
no such idea as long as it is not dogmatically imposed. -
Left for the human mind freely to operate upon, the
idea has ethical vitality ; but, stiffened into a dogma,
the inner force disappears, and the outward yoke of a
usurping hierarchy takes its place.

The problem before us is, at all events, capable of
definite statement. We have on the one hand strong
grounds for concluding that the earth was once a
molten mass. We now find it not only swathed by an
atmosphere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded
with living things. The question is, How were they
introduced ? Certainty may be as unattainable here as
Bishop Butler held it to be in matters of religion ; but
in the contemplation of probabilities the thoughtful
mind is forced to take a side. The conclusion of
Science, which recognises unbroken causal connection
between the past and the present, would undoubtedly be
that the molten earth contained within it elements of
life, which grouped themselves into their present forms
as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance
encountered by this conception, arise solely from the
fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing
in the human mind. Did the latter depend upon reason-
ing alone, it could not hold its ground for an hour
against its rival. But it is warmed into life and
strength by associated hopes and fears — and not only by
these, which are more or less mean, but by that lofti-
ness of thought and feeling which lifts its possessor
above the atmosphere of self, and which the theologic
idea, in its nobler forms, has engendered in noble
minds.

Were not man’s origin implicated, we should accept
without a murmur the derivation of animal and vege-

KEY. JAMES MARTI NEATJ AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 249

table life from what we call inorganic nature. Ihe con-
clusion of pure intellect points this way and no other.
But the purity is troubled by our interests in this life,
and by our hopes and fears regarding the life to come.
Reason is traversed by the emotions, anger rising in the
weaker heads to the height of suggesting that the sup-
pression of the enquirer by the arm of the law would
be an act agreeable to God, and serviceable to man.
But this foolishness is more than neutralised by the
sympathy of the wise ; and in England at least, so long
as the courtesy which befits an earnest theme is adhered
to, such sympathy is ever ready for an honest man.
None of us here need shrink from saying all that he has
a right to say. We ought, however, to remember that
it is not only a band of Jesuits, weaving their schemes of
intellectual slavery, under the innocent guise c of edu-
cation,’ that we are opposing. Our foes are to some
extent of our own household, including not only
the ignorant and the passionate, but a minority of
minds of high calibre and culture, lovers of freedom
moreover, who, though its objective hull be riddled by
logic, still find the ethic life of their religion unim-
paired. But while such considerations ought to influ-
ence the form of our argument, and prevent it from
ever slipping out of the region of courtesy into that of
scorn or abuse, its substance , I think, ought to be
maintained and presented in unmitigated strength.

In the year 1855 the chair of philosophy in the
University of Munich happened to be filled by a
Catholic priest of great critical penetration, great
learning, and great courage, who had borne the brunt
of battle long before Dollinger. His Jesuit col-
leagues, he knew, inculcated the belief that every
human soul is sent into the world from God by a sepa-
rate and supernatural act of creation. In a work

250

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

entitled the ‘ Origin of the Human Soul,’ Professor
Frohschammer, the philosopher here alluded to, was
hardy enough to question this doctrine, and to affirm
that man, body and soul, comes from his parents, the
act of creation being, therefore, mediate and secondary
ony. The Jesuits keep a sharp look out on al
temerities of this kind ; and their organ, the ‘ Civilita
Cattolica,’ immediately pounced upon Frohschammer.
His book was branded as ‘pestilent,’ placed in the
Index, and stamped with the condemnation of the
Church.1 The Jesuit notion does not err on the score
of indefiniteness. According to it, the Power whom
Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi
and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the guise of a
‘ Manufacturer ’ of atoms, turns out annually, for Eng-
land and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new
souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr.
Carlyle, that this annual increment to our population
are ‘ mostly fools,’ but little profit to the human heart
seems derivable from this mode of regarding the Divine
operations.

But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to
accept? Physiologists say that every human being
comes from an egg not more than the yi^-th of an
inch in diameter. Is this egg matter? I hold it to be
so,: as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine
months go to the making of it into a man. Are the
additions made during this period of gestation drawn
from matter ? I think so undoubtedly. If there be

1 King Maximilian II. brought Liebig to Munich, he helped
Helmholtz in his researches, and loved to liberate and foster science.
But through his liberal concession of power to the Jesuits in the
schools, he did far more damage to the intellectual freedom of his
country than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding
himself on being a German Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the
interference of the Roman party with the political affairs of Bavaria.

'REV. JAMES MARTIN E AH AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 251

anything besides matter in the egg , or in the infant
subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it? The
questions already asked with reference to the stars of
snow may be here repeated. Mr. Martineau will com-
plain that I am disenchanting the babe of its wonder ;
but is this the case ? I figure it growing in the
womb, woven by a something not itself, without con-
scious participation on the part of either father or
mother, and appearing in due time a living miracle,
with all its organs and all their implications. Consider
the work accomplished during these nine months in
forming the eye alone — with its lens, and its humours,
and its miraculous retina behind. Consider the ear with
its tympanum, cochlea, and Corti’s organ — an instrument
of three thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain,
and employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret, ante-
cedent to all consciousness, the sonorous tremors of the
external world. All this has been accomplished, not only
without man’s contrivance, but without his knowledge,
the secret of his own organisation having been withheld
from him since his birth in the immeasurable past, until
these latter days. Matter I define as that mysterious
thing by which all this is accomplished. How it came
to have this power is a question on which I never
ventured an opinion. If, then, Matter starts as ‘a
beggar,’ it is, in my view, because the Jacobs of theo-
logy have deprived it of its birthright. Mr. Mar-
tineau need fear no disenchantment. Theories of
evolution go but a short way towards the expla-
nation of this mystery; the Ages, let us hope, will
at length give us a Poet competent to deal with it
aright.

There are men, and they include amongst them
some of the best of the race of man, upon whose minds
this mystery falls without producing either warmth or

252

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

colour. The ‘dry light’ of the intellect suffices for
them, and they live their noble lives untouched by a
desire to give the mystery shape or expression. There
are, on the other hand, men whose minds are warmed
and coloured by its presence, and who, under its
stimulus, attain to moral heights which have never
been overtopped. Different spiritual climates are
necessary for the healthy existence of these two classes
of men ; and different climates must be accorded them.
The history of humanity, however, proves the experi-
ence of the second class to illustrate the most pervading
need. The world will have religion of some kind, even
though it should fly for it to the intellectual whoredom
of £ spiritualism.’ What is really wanted is the lift-
ing power of an ideal element in human life. But the
free play of this power must be preceded by its release
from the practical materialism of the present, as well
as from the torn swaddling bands of the past. It is now
in danger of being stupefied by the one, or strangled by
the other. I look, however, forward to a time when
the strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us
in mere hints and glimpses, during moments 4 of clear-
ness and vigour,’ shall be the stable and permanent
possession of purer and mightier minds than ours —
purer and mightier, partly because of their deeper
knowledge of matter and their more faithful conformity
to its laws.

253

XII,

FERMENTATION, AND ITS BEARINGS ON
SURGERY AND MEDICINE I

ONE of the most remarkable characteristics of the
age in which we live, is its desire and tendency to
connect itself organically with preceding ages — to
ascertain how the state of things that now is came to
he what it is. And the more earnestly and profoundly
this problem is studied, the more clearly comes into
view the vast and varied debt which the world of to-day
owes to that fore-world, in which man by skill, valour,
and well-directed strength first replenished and subdued
the earth. Our prehistoric fathers may have been
savages, but they were clever and observant ones.
They founded agriculture by the discovery and develop-
ment of seeds whose origin is now unknown. They
tamed and harnessed their animal antagonists, and sent
them down to us as ministers, instead of rivals in the
tight for life. Later on, when the claims of luxury
added themselves to those of necessity, we find the
same spirit of invention at work. We have no historic
account of the first brewer, but we glean from history
that his art was practised, and its produce relished,
more than two thousand years ago. Theophrastus,
who was born nearly four hundred years before Christ,

1 A Discourse delivered before the Glasgow Science Lectures
Association, October 19, 1876,

254

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

described beer as the wine of barley. It is extremely
difficult to preserve beer in a hot country, still, Egypt
was the land in which it was first brewed, the desire of
man to quench his thirst with this exhilarating beverage
overcoming all the obstacles which a hot climate threw
in the way of its manufacture.

Our remote ancestors had also learned by experience
that wine maketh glad the heart of man. Noah, we
are informed, planted a vineyard, drank of the wine,
and experienced the consequences. But, though wine
and beer possess so old a history, a very few years ago
no man knew the secret of their formation. Indeed, it
might be said that until the present year no thorough
and scientific account was ever given of the agencies
which come into play in the manufacture of beer, of
the conditions necessary to its health, and of the
maladies and vicissitudes to which it is subject.
Hitherto the art and practice of the brewer have
resembled those of the physician, both being founded on
empirical observation. By this is meant the observa-
tion of facts, apart from the principles which explain
them, and which give the mind an intelligent mastery
over them. The brewer learnt from long experience
the conditions, not the reasons, of success. But he had
to contend, and has still to contend, against unexplained
perplexities. Over and over again his care has been
rendered nugatory ; his beer has fallen into acidity or
rottenness, and disastrous losses have been sustained,
of which he has been unable to assign the cause. It is
the hidden enemies against which the physician and the
brewer have hitherto contended, that recent researches
are dragging into the light of day, thus preparing the
way for their final extermination.

Let us glance for a moment at the outward and visi-

FERMENTATION.

255

ble signs of fermentation. A few weeks ago I paid a visit
to a private still in a Swiss chalet ; and this is what I
saw. In the peasant’s bedroom was a cask with a very
large bunghole carefully closed. The cask contained
cherries which had lain in it for fourteen days. It was
not entirely filled with the fruit, an air-space being-
left above the cherries when they were put in. I had
the bung removed, and a small lamp dipped into this'
space. Its flame was instantly extinguished. The oxy-
gen of the air had entirely disappeared, its place being
taken by carbonic acid gas.1 I tasted the cherries :
they were very sour, though when put into the cask they
were sweet. The cherries and the liquid associated
with them were then placed in a copper boiler, to which
a copper head was closely fitted. From the head pro-
ceeded a copper tube which passed straight through a
vessel of cold water, and issued at the other side.
Under the open end of the tube was placed a bottle to
receive the spirit distilled. The flame of small wood-
splinters being applied to the boiler, after a time vapour
rose into the head, passed through the tube, was con-
densed by the cold of the water, and fell in a liquid
fillet into the bottle. On being tasted, it proved to be
that fiery and intoxicating spirit known in commerce as
Kirsch or Kirschwasser.

The cherries, it should be remembered, were left to
themselves, no ferment of any kind being added to
them. In this respect what has been said of the cherry
applies also to the grape. At the vintage the fruit of
the vine is placed in proper vessels, and abandoned to
its own action. It ferments, producing carbonic acid •
its sweetness disappears, and at the end of a certain

1 The gas which is exhaled from the lungs after the oxygen of
the air has done its duty in purifying the blood, the same also°which
effervesces from soda water and champagne.

256

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

time the unintoxicating grape-juice is converted into
intoxicating wine. Here, as in the case of the cherries,
the fermentation is spontaneous — in what sense sponta-
neous will appear more clearly by-and-by.

It is needless for me to tell a Glasgow audience that
the beer-brewer does not set to work in this way. In
the first place the brewer deals not with the juice of
fruits, but with the juice of barley. The barley having
been steeped for a sufficient time in -water, it is drained
and subjected to a temperature sufficient to cause the
moist grain to germinate ; after which, it is completely
dried upon a kiln. It then receives the name of malt.
The malt is crisp to the teeth, and decidedly sweeter to
the taste than the original barley. It is ground, mashed
up in warm water, then boiled with hops until all the
soluble portions have been extracted ; the infusion thus
produced being called the wort. This is drawn off, and
cooled as rapidly as possible ; then, instead of abandon-
ing the infusion, as the wine-maker does, to its own
action, the brewer mixes yeast with his wort, and places
it in vessels each with only one aperture open to the
air. Soon after the addition of the yeast, a brownish
froth, which is really new yeast, issues from the aperture,
and falls like a cataract into troughs prepared to receive
it. This frothing and foaming of the wort is a proof
that the fermentation is active.

Whence comes the yeast which issues so copiously
from the fermenting tub ? What is this yeast, and how
did the brewer become possessed of it ? Examine its
quantity before and after fermentation. The brewer
introduces, say 10 cwts. of yeast ; he collects 40, or it
may be 50, cwts. The yeast has, therefore, augmented
from four to five fold during the fermentation. Shall
we conclude that this additional yeast has been sponta-
neously generated by the wort ? Are we not rather re-

FERMENTATION.

257

minded of that seed which fell into good ground, and
brought forth fruit, some thirty fold, some sixty fold,
some an hundred fold ? On examination, this notion of
organic growth turns out to be more than a mere surmise.
In the year 1680, when the microscope was still in its
infancy, Leeuwenhoek turned the instrument upon this
substance, and found it composed of minute globules sus-
pended in a liquid. Thus knowledge rested until 1835,
when Cao-niard de la Tour in France, and Schwann in
Germany, independently, but animated by a common
thought, turned microscopes of improved definition and
heightened powers upon yeast, and found it budding
and sprouting before their eyes. The augmentation of
the yeast alluded to above was thus proved to arise
from the growth of a minute plant now called Torula
(or Saccharomyces) Cerevisice. Spontaneous genera-
tion is therefore out of the question. The brewer
deliberately sows the yeast-plant, which grows and
multiplies in the wort as its proper soil. This dis-
covery marks an epoch in the history of fermentation.

But where did the brewer find his yeast ? The reply
to this question is similar to that which must be given
if it were asked where the brewer found his barley. He
has received the seeds of both of them from preceding
generations. Could we connect without solution of con-
tinuity the present with the past, we should probably be
able to trace back the yeast employed by my friend Sir
Fowell Buxton to-day to that employed by some Egyp-
tian brewer two thousand years ago. But you may urge
that there must have been a time when the first yeast-
cell was generated. Granted — exactly as there was
a time when the first barley-corn was generated. Let
not the delusion lay hold of you that a living thing is
easily generated because it is small. Both the yeast-
plant and the barley-plant lose themselves in the dim

VOL. II. s

258

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

twilight of antiquity, and in this our day there is
no more proof of the spontaneous generation of the
one, than there is of the spontaneous generation of the
other.

I stated a moment ago that the fermentation of
grape-juice was spontaneous ; but I was careful to add,

‘ in what sense spontaneous will appear more clearly
by-and-by.’ Now this is the sense meant. The wine-
maker does not, like the brewer and distiller, delibe-
rately introduce either yeast, or any equivalent of yeast,
into his vats ; he does not consciously sow in them any
plant, or the germ of any plant ; indeed, he has been
hitherto in ignorance whether plants or germs of any
kind have had anything to do with his operations.
Still, when the fermented grape-juice is examined, the
living Torula concerned in alcoholic fermentation
never fails to make its appearance. How is this ? If
no living germ has been introduced into the wine-vat,
whence comes the life so invariably developed there ?

You may be disposed to reply, with Turpin and
others, that in virtue of its own inherent powers, the
grape-juice when brought into contact with the vivi-
fying atmospheric oxygen, runs spontaneously and of
its own accord into these low forms of life. I have not
the slightest objection to this explanation, provided
proper evidence can be adduced in support of it. But
the evidence adduced in its favour, as far as I am ac-
quainted with it, snaps asunder under the strain of
scientific criticism. It is, as far as I can see, the evi-
dence of men, who however keen and clever as observers ,
are not rigidly trained experimenters. These alone
are aware of the precautions necessary in investigations
of this delicate kind. In reference, then, to the life of
the wine-vat, what is the decision of experiment when
carried out by competent men ? Let a quantity of the

FERMENTATION.

259

clear, filtered ‘ must ’ of the grape be so boiled as to
destroy such germs as it may have contracted from the
air or otherwise. In contact with germless air the
uncontaminated must never ferments. All the mate-
rials for spontaneous generation are there, but so long
as there is no seed sown, there is no life developed, and
no sign of that fermentation which is the concomitant
of life. Nor need you resort to a boiled liquid. The
grape is sealed by its own skin against contamination
from without. By an ingenious device Pasteur has ex-
tracted from the interior of the grape its pure juice,
and proved that in contact with pure air it never ac-
quires the power to ferment itself, nor to produce fer-
mentation in other liquids.1 It is not, therefore, in the
interior of the grape that the origin of the life observed
in the vat is to be sought.

What then is its true origin? This is Pasteur’s
answer, which his well-proved accuracy renders worthy
of all confidence. At the time of the vintage micro-
scopic particles are observed adherent, both to the outer
surface of the grape and of the twigs which support the
grape. Brush these particles into a capsule of pure
water. It is rendered turbid by the dust. Examined
by a microscope, some of these minute particles are
seen to present the appearance of organised cells.
Instead of receiving them in water, let them be
brushed into the pure inert juice of the grape. Forty-
eight hours after this is done, our familiar Torula is
observed budding and sprouting, the growth of the
plant being accompanied by all the other signs of active
fermentation. W hat is the inference to be drawn from

The liquids of the healthy animal body are also sealed from
external contamination. Pure blood, for example, drawn with due
precautions from the veins, will never ferment or putrefy in contact
with pure air.

2G0

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

this experiment ? Obviously that the particles adherent
to the external surface of the grape include the germs
of that life which, after they have been sown in the
juice, appears in such profusion. Wine is sometimes
objected to on the ground that fermentation is ‘ arti-
ficial; ’ but we notice here the responsibility of nature.
The ferment of the grape clings like a parasite to the
surface of the grape ; and the art of the wine-maker
from time immemorial has consisted in bringing — and
it may be added, ignorantly bringing — two things thus
closely associated by nature into actual contact with
each other. For thousands of years, what has been
done consciously by the brewer, has been done uncon-
sciously by the wine-grower. The one has sown his
leaven just as much as the other.

Nor is it necessary to impregnate the beer-wort
with yeast to provoke fermentation. Abandoned to
the contact of our common air, it sooner or later
ferments ; but the chances are that the produce of that
fermentation, instead of being agreeable, would be
disgusting to the taste. By a rare accident we might
get the true alcoholic fermentation, but the odds
against obtaining it would be enormous. Pure air
acting upon a lifeless liquid will never provoke fer-
mentation ; but our ordinary air is the vehicle of
numberless germs which act as ferments when they fall
into appropriate infusions. Some of them produce
acidity, some putrefaction. The germs of our yeast-
plant are also in the air ; but so sparingly distributed
that an infusion like beer-wort, exposed to the air, is
almost sure to be taken possession of by foreign
organisms. In fact, the maladies of beer are wholly
due to the admixture of these objectionable feiments,
whose forms and modes of nutrition diffei mateiially
from those of the true leaven.

FERMENTATION.

261

Working in an atmosphere charged with the germs
of these organisms, you can understand how easy it is
to fall into error in studying the action of any one
of them. Indeed it is only the most accomplished
experimenter, who, moreover, avails himself of every
means of checking his conclusions, that can walk
without tripping through this land of pitfalls. Such a
man the French chemist Pasteur has hitherto proved
himself to be. He has taught us how to separate the
commingled ferments of our air, and to study their
pure individual action. Gfuided by him, let us fix our
attention more particularly upon the growth and action
of the true yeast-plant under different conditions. Let
it be sown in a fermentable liquid, which is supplied
with plenty of pure air. The plant will flourish in
the aerated infusion, and produce large quantities of
carbonic acid gas — a compound, as you know, of carbon
and oxygen. The oxygen thus consumed by the plant
is the free oxygen of the air, which we suppose to be
abundantly supplied to the liquid. The action is so
far similar to the respiration of animals, which inspire
oxygen and expire carbonic acid. If we examine the
liquid even when the vigour of the plant nas reached
its maximum, we hardly find in it a trace of alcohol.
The yeast has grown and flourished, but it has almost
ceased to act as a ferment. And could every individual
yeast-cell seize, without any impediment, free oxygen
from the surrounding liquid, it is certain that it would
cease to act as a ferment altogether.

What, then, are the conditions under which the
yeast-plant must be placed so that it may display its
characteristic quality ? Reflection on the facts already
referred to suggests a reply, and rigid experiment
confirms the suggestion. Consider the Alpine cherries
in their closed vessel. Consider the beer in its barrel,

2G2

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

with a single small aperture open to the air, through
which it is observed not to imbibe oxygen, but to pour
forth carbonic acid. Whence come the volumes of
oxygen necessary to the production of this latter gas ?
The small quantity of atmospheric air dissolved in the
wort and overlying it would be totally incompetent to
supply the necessary oxygen. In no other way can the
yeast-plant obtain the gas necessary for its respiration
than by wrenching it from surrounding substances in
which the oxygen exists, not free, but in a state of
combination. It decomposes the sugar of the solution
in which it grows, produces heat, breathes forth car-
bonic acid gas, and one of the liquid products of the
decomposition is our familiar alcohol. The act of fer-
mentation, then, is a result of the effort of the little
plant to maintain its respiration by means of combined
oxygen, when its supply of free oxygen is cut off.
As defined by Pasteur, fermentation is life without
air.

But here the knowledge of that thorough investi-
gator comes to our aid to warn us against errors which
have been committed over and over again. It is not
all yeast-cells that can thus live without air and provoke
fermentation. They must be young cells which have
caught their vegetative vigour from contact with free
oxygen. But once possessed of this vigour the yeast
may be transplanted into a saccharine infusion abso-
lutely purged of air, where it will continue to live at
the expense of the oxygen, carbon, and other con-
stituents of the infusion. Under these new conditions
its life, as a plant, will be by no means so vigorous as
when it had a supply of free oxygen, but its action as
a ferment will be indefinitely greater.

Does the yeast-plant stand alone in its power of
provoking alcoholic fermentation ? It would be singu-

FERMENTATION.

263

lar if amid the multitude of low vegetable forms no
other could be foufcd capable of acting in a similar way.
And here again we have occasion to marvel at that
sagacity of observation among the ancients to which we
owe so vast a debt. Not only did they discover the
alcoholic ferment of yeast, but they had to exercise a
wise selection in picking it out from others, and giving
it special prominence. Place an old boot in a moist
place, or expose common paste or a pot of jam to the
air ; it soon becomes coated with a blue-green mould,
which is nothing else than the fructification of a little
plant called Penicillium glaucum. Do not imagine
that the mould has sprung spontaneously from boot, or
paste, or jam ; its germs, which are abundant in the
air, have been sown, and have germinated, in as legal
and legitimate a way as thistle-seeds wafted by the
wind to a proper soil. Let the minute spores of Peni-
cillium be sown in a fermentable liquid, which has
been previously so boiled as to kill all other spores or
seeds which it may contain ; let pure air have free
access to the mixture ; the Penicillium will grow
rapidly, striking long filaments into the liquid, and
fructifying at its surface. Test the infusion at various
stages of the plant’s growth, you will never find in it a
trace of alcohol. But forcibly submerge the little
plant, push it down deep into the liquid, where the
quantity of free oxygen that can reach it is insufficient
for its needs, it immediately begins to act as a ferment,
supplying itself with oxygen by the decomposition of
the sugar, and producing alcohol as one of the results
of the decomposition. Many other low microscopic
plants act in a similar manner. In aerated liquids
they flourish without any production of alcohol, but cut
off from free oxygen they act as ferments, producing
alcohol exactly as the real alcoholic leaven produces it,

204 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

only less copiously. For the right apprehension of all
these facts we are indebted to Pasteur.

In the cases hitherto considered, the fermentation
is proved to he the invariable correlative of life , being
produced by organisms foreign to the fermentable sub-
stance. But the substance itself may also have within
it, to some extent, the motive power of fermentation.
The yeast-plant, as we have learned, is an assemblage
of living cells ; but so at bottom, as shown by Schleiden
and Schwann, are all living organisms. Cherries,
apples, peaches, pears, plums, and grapes, for example,
are composed of cells, each of which is a living unit.
And here I have to direct your attention to a point of
extreme interest. In 1821, the celebrated French
chemist, Berard, established the important fact that all
ripening fruit, exposed to the free atmosphere, absorbed
the oxygen of the atmosphere and liberated an approxi-
mately equal volume of carbonic acid. He also found
that when ripe fruits were placed in a confined at-
mosphere, the oxygen of the atmosphere was first
absorbed, and an equal volume of carbonic acid given
out. But the process did not end here. After the
oxygen had vanished, carbonic acid, in considerable
quantities, continued to be exhaled by the fruits, which
at the same time lost a portion of their sugar, becoming
more acid to the taste, though the absolute quantity of
acid was not augmented. This was an observation of
capital importance, and Berard had the sagacity to
remark that the process might be regarded as a kind of
fermentation.

Thus the living cells of fruits can absorb oxygen and
breathe out carbonic acid, exactly like the living cells
of the leaven of beer. Supposing the access of oxygen
suddenly cut off, will the living fruit-cells as suddenly
die, or will they continue to live as yeast lives, by

FERMENTATION.

265

extracting oxygen from the saccharine juices round
them ? This is a question of extreme theoretic signi-
ficance. It was first answered affirmatively by the
able and conclusive experiments ol Lechartier and
Bellamy, and the answer was subsequently confirmed
and explained by the experiments and the reasoning of
Pasteur. Berard only showed the absorption of oxygen
and the production of carbonic acid ; Lechartier and
Bellamy proved the production of alcohol, thus com-
pleting the evidence that it was a case of real fermen-
tation, though the common alcoholic ferment was absent.
So full was Pasteur of the idea that the cells of a fruit
would continue to live at the expense of the sugar of
the fruit, that once in his laboratory, while conversing
on these subjects with M. Dumas, he exclaimed, ‘ I will
wager that if a grape be plunged into an atmosphere
of carbonic acid, it will produce alcohol and carbonic
acid by the continued life of its own cells — that they
will act for a time like the cells of the true alcoholic
leaven.’ He made the experiment, and found the result
to be what he had foreseen. He then extended the
enquiry. Placing under a bell-jar twenty-four plums,
he filled the jar with carbonic acid gas ; beside it he
placed twenty-four similar plums uncovered. At the
end of eight days, he removed the plums from the jar,
and compared them with the others. The difference
was extraordinary. The uncovered fruits had become
soft, watery, and very sweet ; the others were firm and
hard, their fleshy portions being not at all watery. They
had, moreover, lost a considerable quantity of their
sugar. They were afterwards bruised, and the juice
was distilled. It yielded six and a half grammes of
alcohol, or one per cent, of the total weight of the
plums. Neither in these plums, nor in the grapes first
experimented on by Pasteur, could any trace of the

266 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

oidinaiy alcoholic leaven be found. As previously

proved by Lechartier and Bellamy, the fermentation
was the work of the living cells of the fruit itself, after
air had been denied to them. When, moreover, the cells
were destroyed by bruising, no fermentation ensued.
The fermentation was the correlative of a vital act,
and it ceased when life was extinguished.

Liidersdorf was the first to show by this method
that yeast acted, not, as Liebig had assumed, in virtue
of its organic , but in virtue of its organised character.
He destroyed the cells of yeast by rubbing them on a
ground glass plate, and found that with the destruction of
the organism, though its chemical constituents remained,
the power to act as a ferment totally disappeared.

One word more in reference to Liebig may find a
place here. To the philosophic chemist thoughtfully
pondering these phenomena, familiar with the concep-
tion of molecular motion, and the changes produced
by the interactions of purely chemical forces, nothing
could be more natural than to see in the process of
fermentation a simple illustration of molecular insta-
bility, the ferment propagating to surrounding molecular
groups the overthrow of its own tottering combinations.
Broadly considered, indeed, there is a certain amount
of truth in this theory ; but Liebig, who propounded
it, missed the very kernel of the phenomena when he
overlooked or contemned the part played in fermenta-
tion by microscopic life. He looked at the matter too
little with the eye of the body, and too much with the
spiritual eye. He practically neglected the microscope,
and was unmoved by the knowledge which its revelations
would have poured in upon his mind. His hypothesis,
as I have said, was natural — nay it was a striking
illustration of Liebig’s power to penetrate and unveil
molecular actions ; but it was an error, and as such has

FERMENTATION.

267

proved an ignis fcituus instead of a pharos to some
of his followers.

I have said that our air is full of the germs of
ferments differing from the alcoholic leaven, and some-
times seriously interfering with the latter. They are
the weeds of this microscopic garden which often over-
shadow and choke the flowers. Let us take an illus-
trative case. Expose milk to the air. It will, after
a time, turn sour, separating like blood into clot and
serum. Place a drop of this sour milk under a powerful
microscope and watch it closely. You see the minute
butter-globules animated by that curious quivering
motion called the Brownian motion. But let not this
attract your attention too much, for it is another
motion that we have now to seek. Here and there you
observe a greater disturbance than ordinary among
the globules ; keep your eye upon the place of tumult,
and you will probably see emerging from it a long eel-
like organism, tossing the globules aside and wriggling
more or less rapidly across the field of the microscope.
Familiar with one sample of this organism, which from
its motions receives the name of vibrio , you soon detect
numbers of them. It is these organisms, and other
analogous though apparently motionless ones, which by
decomposing the milk render it sour and putrid. They are
the lactic and putrid ferments, as the yeast-plant is the
alcoholic ferment of sugar. Keep them and their germs
out of your milk and it will continue sweet. But milk
may become putrid without becoming sour. Examine
such putrid milk microscopically, and you find it
swarming with shorter organisms, sometimes associated
with the vibrios, sometimes alone, and often manifesting
a wonderful alacrity of motion. Keep these organisms
and their germs out of your milk and it will never

268

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

putrify. Expose a mutton-chop to the air and keep it
moist ; in summer weather it soon stinks. Place a drop
ot the juice of the fetid chop under a powerful micro-
scope ; it is seen swarming with organisms resembling
those in the putrid milk. These organisms, which receive
the common name of bacteria are the agents of all
putrefaction. Keep them and their germs from your
meat and it will remain for ever sweet. Thus we begin
to see that within the world of life to which we our-
selves belong, there is another living world requiring
the microscope for its discernment, but which, never-
theless, has the most important bearing on the welfare
of the higher life-world.

And now let us reason together as regards the origin
of these bacteria. A granular powder is placed in your
hands, and you are asked to state what it is.- You
examine it, and have, or have not, reason to suspect that
seeds of some kind are mixed up in it. To determine
this point you prepare a bed in your garden, sow in it
the powder, and soon after find a mixed crop of docks
and thistles sprouting from your bed. Until this powder
was sown neither docks nor thistles ever made their ap-
pearance in your garden. You repeat the experiment
once, twice, ten times, fifty times. From fifty different
beds after the sowing of the powder, you obtain the same
crop. What will be your response to the question
proposed to you ? ‘ I am not in a condition,’ you

would say, 4 to affirm that every grain of the powder is
a dock-seed, or a thistle-seed ; but I am in a condition
to affirm that both dock and thistle-seeds form, at all
events, part of the powder.’ Supposing a succession of
such powders to be placed in your hands with grains
becoming gradually smaller, until they dwindle to the

1 Doubtless organisms exhibiting grave specific differences are
grouped together under this common name.

FERMENTATION.

269

size of impalpable dust particles : assuming that you
treat them all in the same way, and that from every
one of them in a few days you obtain a definite crop —
it may be clover, it may be mustard, it may be mignon-
ette, it may be a plant more minute than any of these,
the smallness of the particles, or of the plants that spring
from them, does not affect the validity of the conclu-
sion. Without a shadow of misgiving you would con-
clude that the powder must have contained the seeds
or germs of the life observed. There is not in the
range of physical science, an experiment more conclu-
sive nor an inference safer than this one.

Supposing the powder to be light enough to float in
the air, and that you are enabled to see it there just as
plainly as you saw the heavier powder in the palm of
your hand. If the dust sown by the air instead of by
the hand produce a definite living crop, with the same
logical rigour you would conclude that the germs of
this crop must be mixed with the dust. To take an
illustration : the spores of the little plant Penicillium
glaucum , to which I have already referred, are light
enough to float in the air. A cut apple, a pear, a
tomato, a slice of vegetable marrow, or, as already men-
tioned, an old moist boot, a dish of paste, or a pot of
jam, constitutes a proper soil for the Penicillium. Now,
if it could be proved that the dust of the air when sown
in this soil produces this plant, while, wanting the dust,
neither the air, nor the soil, nor both together can pro-
duce it, it would be obviously just as certain in this
case that the floating dust contains the germs of Peni-
cillium as that the powders sown in your garden
contained the germs of the plants which sprung from
them.

But how is the floating dust to be rendered visible ?
In this way. Build a little chamber and provide it

270

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

with a door, windows, and window-shutters. Let an
aperture be made in one of the shutters through which
a sunbeam can pass. Close the door and windows so
that no light shall enter save through the hole in the
shutter. The track of the sunbeam is at first per-
fectly plain and vivid in the air of the room. If all
disturbance of the air of the chamber be avoided, the
luminous track will become fainter and fainter, until at
last it disappears absolutely, and no trace of the beam
is to be seen. What rendered the beam visible at first ?
The floating dust of the air, which, thus illuminated
and observed, is as palpable to sense as dust or powder
placed on the palm of the hand. In the still air the
dust gradually sinks to the floor or sticks to the walls
and ceiling, until finally, by this self-cleansing process,
the air is entirely freed from mechanically suspended
matter.

Thus, far, I think, we have made our footing sure.
Let us proceed. Chop up a beefsteak and allow it to
remain for two or three hours just covered with warm
water ; you thus extract the juice of the beef in a con-
centrated form. By properly boiling the liquid and
filtering it, you can obtain from it a perfectly trans-
parent beef-tea. Expose a number of vessels containing
this tea to the moteless air of your chamber ; and
expose a number of vessels containing precisely the same
liquid to the dust-laden air. In three days every one of
the latter stinks, and examined with the microscope
every one of them is found swarming with the bacteria
of putrefaction. After three months, or three years,
the beef-tea within the chamber is found in every case
as sweet and clear, and as free from bacteria, as it was
at the moment when it was first put in. There is abso-
lutely no difference between the air within and that with-
out save that the one is dustless and the other dust- laden.

FERMENTATION.

271

Clinch the experiment thus: Open the door of your
chamber and allow the dust to enter it. In three days
afterwards you have every vessel within the chamber
swarming' with bacteria, and in a state of active putre-
faction. Here, also, the inference is quite as certain as
in the case of the powder sown in your garden. Mul-
tiply your proofs by building fifty chambers instead of
one, and by employing every imaginable infusion of
wild animals and tame ; of flesh, fish, fowl, and viscera;
of vegetables of the most various kinds. If in all these
cases you find the dust infallibly producing its crop of
bacteria, while neither the dustless air nor the nutritive
infusion, nor both together, are ever able to produce
this crop, your conclusion is simply irresistible that the
dust of the air contains the germs of the crop which
has appeared in your infusions. I repeat there is no
inference of experimental science more certain than
this one. In the presence of such facts, to use the
words of a paper lately published in the 4 Philosophical
Transactions,’ it would be simply monstrous to affirm
that these swarming crops of bacteria are spontaneously
generated.

Is there then no experimental proof of spontaneous
generation ? I answer without hesitation, none ! But
to doubt the experimental proof of a fact, and to deny
its possibility, are two different things, though some
writers confuse matters by making them synonymous.
In fact, this doctrine of spontaneous generation, in one
form or another, falls in with the theoretic beliefs of
some of the foremost workers of this age ; but it is
exactly these men who have the penetration to see, and
the honesty to expose, the weakness of the evidence
adduced in its support.

And here observe how these discoveries tally with

272

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the common practices of life. Heat kills the bacteria,
colds numbs them. When my housekeeper has pheasants
in charge which she wishes to keep sweet, but which
threaten to give way, she partially cooks the birds,
kills the infant bacteria, and thus postpones the evil day.
By boiling her milk she also extends its period of
sweetness. Some weeks ago in the Alps I made a few
experiments on the influence of cold upon ants. Though
the sun was strong, patches of snow still maintained
themselves on the mountain slopes. The ants were
found in the warm grass and on the warm rocks adja-
cent. Transferred to the snow the rapidity of their
paralysis was surprising. In a few seconds a vigorous
ant, after a few languid struggles, would wholly lose
its power of locomotion and lie practically dead upon
the snow. Transferred to the warm rock, it would
revive, to be again smitten with death-like numbness
when retransferred to the snow. What is true of the
ant is specially true of our bacteria. Their active
life is suspended by cold, and with it their power of
producing or continuing putrefaction. This is the
whole philosophy of the preservation of meat by cold.
The fishmonger, for example, when he surrounds bis
very assailable wares by lumps of ice, stays the
process of putrefaction by reducing to numbness and
inaction the organisms which produce it, and in the
absence of which his fish would remain sweet and sound.
It is the astonishing activity into which these bacteria
are pushed by warmth that renders a single summer’s
day sometimes so disastrous to the great butchers of
London and Glasgow. The bodies of guides lost in
the crevasses of Alpine glaciers have come to the
surface forty years after their interment, without the
flesh showing any sign of putrefaction. But the most
astonishing case of this kind is that of the hairy

FERMENTATION.

273

elephant of Siberia which was found incased in ice.
It had been buried for ages, but when laid bare its
flesh was sweet, and for some time afforded copious
nutriment to the wild beasts which fed upon it.

Beer is assailable by all the organisms here referred
to, some of which produce acetic, some lactic, and some
butyric acid, while yeast is open to attack from the
bacteria of putrefaction. In relation to the particular
beverage the brewer wishes to produce, these foreign
ferments have been properly called ferments of disease.
The cells of the true leaven are globules, usually some-
what elongated. The other organisms are more or less
rod-like or eel-like in shape, some of them being beaded
so as to resemble necklaces. Each of these organisms
produces a fermentation and a flavour peculiar to itself.
Keep them out of your beer and it remains for ever
unaltered. Never without them will your beer contract
disease. But their germs are in the air, in the vessels
employed in the brewery ; even in the yeast used to
impregnate the wort. Consciously or unconsciously,
the art of the brewer is directed against them. His
aim is to paralyze, if he cannot annihilate them.

For beer, moreover, the question of temperature is
one of supreme importance ; indeed, the recognised
influence of temperature is causing on the continent
of Europe a complete revolution in the manufacture of
beer. Wheu I was a student in Berlin, in 1851, there
were certain places specially devoted to the sale of
Bavarian beer, which was then making its way into
public favour. This beer is prepared by what is called
the process of loiv fermentation ; the name being given
partly because the yeast of the beer, instead of rising
to the top and issuing through the bunghole, falls
to the bottom of the cask ; but partly, also, because
it is produced at a low temperature. The other and

YOL. II. t

274

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

older process, called high fermentation , is far more
handy, expeditious, and cheap. In high fermentation
eight days suffice for the production of the beer ; in low
fermentation, ten, fifteen, even twenty days are found
necessary. Vast quantities of ice, moreover, are con-
sumed in the process of low fermentation. In the
single brewery of Dreher, of Vienna, a hundred million
pounds of ice are consumed annually in cooling the
wort and beer. Notwithstanding these obvious and
weighty drawbacks, the low fermentation is rapidly dis-
placing the high upon the Continent. Here are some
statistics which show the number of breweries of both

kinds existing in Bohemia in

1863,

1865,

and

18C0.

1865.

1870.

High Fermentation . .

281

81

18

Low Fermentation . .

135

459

831

Thus in ten years the number of high-fermentation
breweries fell from 281 to 18, while the number of low-
fermentation breweries rose from 135 to 831. The
sole reason for this vast change — a change which
involves a great expenditure of time, labour, and money
— is the additional command which it gives the brewer
over the fortuitous ferments of disease. These fer-
ments, which, it is to be remembered, are living
organisms, have their activity suspended by tempera-
tures below 10° C., and as long as they are reduced to
torpor the beer remains untainted either by acidity or
putrefaction. The beer of low fermentation is brewed
in winter, and kept in cool cellars; the brewer being
thus enabled to dispose of it at his leisure, instead of
forcing its consumption to avoid the loss involved in
its alteration if kept too long. Hops, it may be
remarked, act to some extent as an antiseptic to beer.
The essential oil of the hop is bactericidal : hence the

FERMENTATION.

275

strong impregnation with hop juice of all beer intended
for exportation.

These low organisms, which one might be disposed
to regard as the beginnings of life, were we not warned
that the microscope, precious and perfect as it is, has no
power to show us the real beginnings of life, are by no
means purely useless or purely mischievous in the
economy of nature. They are only noxious when out
of their proper place. They exercise a useful and
valuable function as the burners and consumers of dead
matter, animal and vegetable, reducing such matter,
with a rapidity otherwise unattainable, to innocent
carbonic acid and water. Furthermore, they are not all
alike, and it is only restricted classes of them that are
really dangerous to man. One difference in their habits
is worthy of special reference here. Air, or rather the
oxygen of the air, which is absolutely necessary to the
support of the bacteria of putrefaction, is, according to
Pasteur, absolutely deadly to the vibrios which provoke
the butyric acid fermentation. This has been illus-
trated by the following beautiful observation.

A drop of the liquid containing those small organisms
is placed upon glass, and on the drop is placed a circle
of exceedingly thin glass ; for, to magnify them suffi-
ciently, it is necessary that the object-glass of the
microscope should come very close to the organisms.
Pound the edge of the circular plate of glass the liquid
is in contact with the air, and incessantly absorbs it,
including the oxygen. Here, if the drop be charged
with bacteria, we have a zone of very lively ones. But
through this living zone, greedy of oxygen and appro-
priating it, the vivifying gas cannot penetrate to the
centre of the film. In the middle, therefore, the
bacteria die, while their peripheral colleagues continue
• active. If a bubble of air chance to be enclosed in the

27 G

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

film, round it the bacteria will pirouette and wabble
until its oxygen has been absorbed, after which all
their motions cease. Precisely the reverse of all this
occurs with the vibrios of butyric acid. In their case
it is the peripheral organisms that are first killed, the
central ones remaining vigorous while ringed by a zone
of dead. Pasteur, moreover, filled two vessels with a
liquid containing these vibrios ; through one vessel he
led air, and killed its vibrios in half an hour ; through
the other he led carbonic acid, and after three hours
found the vibrios fully active. It was while observing
these differences of deportment fifteen years ago that
the thought of life without air, and its bearing upon
the theory of fermentation, flashed upon the mind of
this admirable investigator.

We now approach an aspect of this question which
concerns us still more closely, and will be best illustrated
by an actual fact. A few years ago I was bathing in
an Alpine stream, and returning to my clothes from
the cascade which had been my shower-bath, I slipped
upon a block of granite, the sharp crystals of which
stamped themselves into my naked shin. The wound
was an awkward one, but being in vigorous health at
the time, I hoped for a speedy recovery. Dipping a
clean pocket-handkerchief into the stream, I wrapped it
round the wound, limped home, and remained for four
or five days quietly in bed. There was no pain, and at
the end of this time I thought myself quite fit to quit
my room. The wound, when uncovered, was found
perfectly clean, uninflamed, and entirely free from
matter. Placing over it a bit of goldbeater’s-skin, I
walked about all day. Towards evening itching and
heat were felt ; a large accumulation of matter followed,
and I was forced to go to bed again. I he water-

FERMENTATION.

277

bondage was restored, but it was powerless to check
the action now set up ; arnica was applied, but it made
matters worse. The inflammation increased alarm-
ingly, until finally I had to be carried on men s
shoulders down the mountain and transported to
Geneva, where, thanks to the kindness of friends, I
was immediately placed in the best medical hands.
On the morning after my arrival in Geneva, Dr.
Gautier discovered an abscess in my instep, at a distance
of five inches from the wound. The two were con-
nected by a channel, or sinus , as it is technically called f
through which he was able to empty the abscess, with-
out the application of the lance.

By what agency was that channel formed — what
was it that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my
instep, and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed ?
In the very room where the water dressing had been
removed from my wound and the goldbeater’s-skin
applied to it, I opened this year a number of tubes,
containing perfectly clear and sweet infusions of fish,
flesh, and vegetable. These hermetically sealed in-
fusions had been exposed for weeks, both to the sun of
the Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen, without showing
the slightest turbidity or sign of life. But two days
after they were opened the greater number of them
swarmed with the bacteria of putrefaction, the germs
of which had been contracted from the dust-laden air
of the room. And had the matter from my abscess
been examined, my memory of its appearance leads me
to infer that it would have been found equally swarm-
ing with these bacteria — that it was their germs
which got into my incautiously opened wound, .and that
they were the subtile workers that burrowed down
my shin, dug the abscess in my instep, and produced,
effects which might easily have proved fatal.

278

FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

This apparent digression brings us face to face
with the labours of a man who combines the penetration
of the true theorist with the skill and conscientiousness
of the true experimenter, and whose practice is one
continued demonstration of the theory that the putre-
faction of wounds is to be averted by the destruction
of the germs of bacteria. Not only from his own
reports of his cases, but from the reports of eminent
men who have visited his hospital, and from the
opinions expressed to me by continental surgeons, do
I gather that one of the greatest steps ever made in
the art of surgery was the introduction of the anti-
septic system of treatment, introduced by Professor
Lister.

The interest of this subject does not slacken as we
proceed. We began with the cherry-cask and beer-
vat ; we end with the body of man. There are persons
born with the power of interpreting natural facts, as
there are others smitten with everlasting incompetence
in regard to such interpretation. To the former class
in an eminent degree belonged the illustrious philo-
sopher Robert Boyle, whose words in relation to this
subject have in them the forecast of prophecy. ‘And
let me add,’ writes Boyle in his ‘ Essay on the Patho-
logical Part of Physik,’ ‘ that he that thoroughly under-
stands the nature of ferments and fermentations shall
probably be much better able than he that ignores
them, to give a fair account of divers phenomena of
several diseases (as well fevers as others), which will
perhaps be never properly understood without an insight
into the doctrine of fermentations.’

Two hundred years have passed since these preg-
nant words were written, and it is only in this our day
that men are beginning to fully realise their truth. In
the domain of surgery the justice of Boyle’s surmise

FERMENTATION.

279

has been most strictly demonstrated. But we now pass
the bounds of surgery proper, and enter the domain of
epidemic disease, including those fevers so sagaciously
referred to by Boyle. The most striking analogy be-
tween a contagium and a ferment is to be found in the
power of indefinite self-multiplication possessed and
exercised by both. You know the exquisitely truthful
figures regarding leaven employed in the New Testa-
ment. A particle hid in three measures of meal lea-
vens it all. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
In a similar manner, a particle of contagium spreads
through the human body and may be so multiplied as
to strike down whole populations. Consider the effect
produced upon the system by a microscopic quantity of
the virus of smallpox. That virus is, to all intents and
purposes, a seed. It is sown as yeast is sown, it grows
and multiplies as yeast grows and multiplies, and it
always reproduces itself. To Pasteur we are indebted
for a series of masterly researches, wherein he exposes
the looseness and general baselessness of prevalent
notions regarding the transmutation of one ferment
into another. He guards himself against saying it is
impossible. The true investigator is sparing in the use
of this word, though the use of it is unsparingly ascribed
to him ; but, as a matter of fact, Pasteur has never
been able to effect the alleged transmutation, while he
has been always able to point out the open doorways
through which the affirmers of such transmutations
had allowed error to march in upon them.1

The great source of error here has been already

1 Those who wish for an illustration of the care necessary in
these researches, and of the carelessness with which they have in
some cases been conducted, will do well to consult the Rev. W. H.
Dallinger’s excellent ‘ Notes on Heterogenesis ’ in the October
number of the Popular Science Review.

280

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

alluded to in this discourse. The observers worked in
an atmosphere charged with the germs of different
organisms ; the mere accident of first possession ren-
dering now one organism, now another, triumphant.
In different stages, moreover, of its fermentative or
putrefactive changes, the same infusion may so alter as
to be successively taken possession of by different or-
ganisms. Such cases have been adduced to show that
the earlier organisms must have been transformed into
the later ones, whereas they are simply cases in whicli
different germs, because of changes in the infusion,
render themselves valid at different times.

By teaching us how to cultivate each ferment in its
purity — in other words, by teaching us how to rear the
individual organism apart from all others, — Pasteur
has enabled us to avoid all these errors. And where
this isolation of a particular organism has been duly
effected it grows and multiplies indefinitely, but no
change of it into another organism is ever observed.
In Pasteur’s researches the Bacterium remained a Bac-
terium, the Vibrio a Vibrio, the Penicillium a Penicil-
lium, and the Torula a Torula. Sow any of these in a
state of purity in an appropriate liquid ; you get it, and
it alone, in the subsequent crop. In like manner, sow
small-pox in the human body, your crop is small-pox.
Sow there scarlatina, and your crop is scarlatina. Sow
typhoid virus, your crop is typhoid — cholera, your crop
is cholera. The disease bears as constant a relation to
its contagium as the microscopic organisms just enume-
rated do to their germs, or indeed as a thistle does to its
seed. No wonder then, with analogies so obvious and
so striking, that the conviction is spxeading and grow-
ing daily in strength, that reproductive parasitic life is
at the root of epidemic disease — that living ferments
finding lodgment in the body increase there and multi-

FEKMENTATION.

281

ply, directly ruining the tissue on which they subsist,
or destroying life indirectly by the generation of poison-
ous compounds within the body. This conclusion,
which comes to us with a presumption almost amount-
ing to demonstration, is clinched by the fact that viru-
lently infective diseases have been discovered with
which living organisms are as closely and as indissolu-
bly associated as the growth of Torula is with the fer-
mentation of beer.

And here, if you will permit me, I would utter a
word of warning to well-meaning people. We have now
reached a phase of this question when it is of the very
last importance that light should once for all be thrown
upon the manner in which contagious and infectious
diseases take root and spread. To this end the action of
various ferments upon the organs and tissues of the
living body must be studied ; the habitat of each special
organism concerned in the production of each specific
disease must be determined, and the mode by which its
germs are spread abroad as sources of further infection.
It is only by such rigidly accurate enquiries that we
can obtain final and complete mastery over these de-
stroyers. Hence, while abhorring cruelty of all kinds,
while shrinking sympathetically from all animal suf-
fering— suffering which my own pursuits never call
upon me to inflict, — an unbiassed survey of the field of
research now opening out before the physiologist causes
me to conclude, that no greater calamity could befall the
human race than the stoppage of experimental en-
quiry in this direction. A lady whose philanthropy
has rendered her illustrious said to me some time ago,
that science was becoming immoral ; that the researches
of the past, unlike those of the present, were carried on
without cruelty. I replied to her that the science of
Kepler and Newton, to which she referred, dealt with

282

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the laws and phenomena of inorganic nature ; but that
one great advance made by modern science was in the
direction of biology, or the science of life ; and that in
this new direction scientific enquiry, though at the out-
set pursued at the cost of some temporary suffering,
would in the end prove a thousand times more benefi-
cent than it had ever hitherto been. I said this because
I saw that the very researches which the lady depre-
cated were leading us to such a knowledge of epidemic
diseases as will enable us finally to sweep these scourges
of the human race from the face of the earth.

This is a point of such capital importance that I
should like to bring it home to your intelligence by a
single trustworthy illustration. In 1850, two distin-
guished French observers, MM. Davainne and Rayer,
noticed in the blood of animals which had died of the
virulent disease called splenic fever, small microscopic
organisms resembling transparent rods, but neither of
them at that time attached any significance to the
observation. In 1861, Pasteur published a memoir on
the fermentation of butyric acid, wherein he described
the organism which provoked it ; and after reading this
memoir it occurred to Davainne that splenic fever might
be a case of fermentation set up within the animal
body, by the organisms which had been observed by him
and Rayer. This idea has been placed beyond all doubt
by subsequent research.

Observations of the highest importance have also
been made on splenic fever by Pollender and Brauell.
Two years ago, Dr. Burdon Sanderson gave us a very
clear account of what was known up to that time of
this disorder. With regard to the permanence of the
contagium, it had been proved to hang for years about
localities where it had once prevailed ; and this seemed
to show that the rod-like organisms could not con-

FERMENTATION.

283

stitute the eontagium, because their infective power
was found to vanish in a few weeks. But other facts
established an intimate connection between the organ-
isms and the disease, so that a review ot all the facts
caused Dr. Sanderson to conclude that the eontagium
existed in two distinct forms : the one 4 fugitive ’ and
visible as transparent rods ; the other permanent but
‘ latent,’ and not yet brought within the grasp of the
microscope.

At the time that Dr. Sanderson was writing this re-
port, a young German physician, named Koch,1 occupied
with the duties of his profession in an obscure country
district, was already at work, applying, during his spare
time, various original and ingenious devices to the in-
vestigation of splenic fever. He studied the habits of
the rod-like organisms, and found the aqueous humour
of an ox’s eye to be particularly suitable for their nutri-
tion. With a drop of the aqueous humour he mixed
the tiniest speck of a liquid containing the rods, placed
the drop under his microscope, warmed it suitably, and
observed the subsequent action. During the first two
bom's hardly any change was noticeable ; but at the
end of this time the rods began to lengthen, and the
action was so rapid that at the end of three or four
hours they attained from ten to twenty times their
original length. At the end of a few additional hours
they had formed filaments in many cases a hundred
times the length of the original rods. The same fila-
ment, in fact, was frequently observed to stretch through
several fields of the microscope. Sometimes they lay
in straight lines parallel to each other, in other cases
they were bent, twisted, and coiled into the most grace-
ful figures ; while sometimes they formed knots of such

1 This, I believe, was the first reference to the researches of
Koch made in this country. 1879.

284

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

bewildering complexity that it was impossible for the
eye to trace the individual filaments through the con-
fusion.

Had the observation ended here an interesting
scientific fact would have been added to our previous
store, but the addition would have been of little prac-
tical value. Koch, however, continued to watch the
filaments, and after a time noticed little dots appearing
within them. These dots became more and more dis-
tinct, until finally the whole length of the organism
was studded with minute ovoid bodies, which lay within
the outer integument like peas within their shell. By-
and-by the integument fell to pieces, the place of the
organisms being taken by a long row of seeds or spores.
These observations, which were confirmed in all re-
spects by the celebrated naturalist, Cohn of Breslau,
are of the highest importance. They clear up the exist-
ing perplexity regarding the latent and visible contagia
of splenic fever ; for in the most conclusive manner,
Koch proved the spores, as distinguished from the rods,
to constitute the contagium of the fever in its most
deadly and persistent form.

How did he reach this important resiilt ? Mark the
answer. There was but one way open to him to test
the activity of the contagium, and that was the inocu-
lation with it of living animals. He operated upon
guinea-pigs and rabbits, but the vast majority of his
experiments were made upon mice. Inoculating them
with the fresh blood of an animal suffering from splenic
fever, they invariably died of the same disease within
twenty or thirty hours after inoculation. He then
sought to determine how the contagium maintained its
vitality. Drying the infectious blood containing the
rod-like organisms, in which, however, the spores were
not developed, he found the contagium to be that which

FERMENTATION.

285

Dr. Sanderson calls ‘ fugitive.’ It maintained its power
of infection for five weeks at the furthest. He then
dried blood containing the fully-developed spores, and
exposed the substance to a variety of conditions. He
permitted the dried blood to assume the form of dust ;
wetted this dust, allowed it to dry again, permitted it
to remain for an indefinite time in the midst of putre-
fying matter, and subjected it to various other tests.
After keeping the spore-charged blood which had been
treated in this fashion for four years, he inoculated a
number of mice with it, and found its action as fatal as
that of blood fresh from the veins of an animal suffering
from splenic fever. There was no single escape from
death after inoculation by this deadly contagium. Un-
counted millions of these spores are developed in the
body of every animal which has died of splenic fever,
and every spore of these millions is competent to produce
the disease. The name of this formidable parasite is
Bacillus anthracis.1

How the very first step towards the extirpation of
these contagia is the knowledge of their nature ; and
the knowledge brought to us by Dr. Koch will render
as certain the stamping out of splenic fever as the
stoppage of the plague of pebrine by the researches of
Pasteur.2 One small item of statistics will show what

1 Koch found that to produce its characteristic effects the con-
tagium of splenic fever must enter the blood ; the virulently
infective spleen of a diseased animal may be eaten with impunity
by mice. On the other hand, the disease refuses to be communi-
cated by inoculation to dogs, partridges, or sparrows. In their blood
Bacillus antli/rdds ceases to act as a ferment. Pasteur announced
more than six years ago the propagation of the vibrios of the
silkworm disease called flacherie, both by fission and by spores.
He also made some remarkable experiments on the permanence
of the contagium in the form of spores. See 1 Etudes sur la Maladie
de.s Vers & Soie,’ pp. 168 and 256.

2 Surmising that the immunity enjoyed by birds might arise

286

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

this implies. In the single district of Novgorod in
Kussia, between the years 1867 and 1870, over fifty-six
thousand cases of death by splenic fever, among horses,
cows, and sheep were recorded. Nor did its ravages
confine themselves to the animal world, for during the
time and in the district referred to, five hundred and
twenty-eight human beings perished in the agonies of
the same disease.

A description of the fever will help you to come to
a right decision on the point which I wish to submit
to your consideration. 4 An animal,’ says Dr. Burdon
Sanderson, ‘which perhaps for the previous day has
declined food and shown signs of general disturbance,
begins to shudder and to have twitches of the muscles
of the back, and soon after becomes weak and listless.
In the meantime the respiration becomes frequent and
often difficult, and the temperature rises three or
four degrees above the normal ; but soon convulsions,
affecting chiefly the muscles of the back and loins,
usber in the final collapse of which the progress is
marked by the loss of all power of moving the trunk
or extremities, diminution of temperature, mucous and
sanguinolent alvine evacuations, and similar discharges
from the mouth and nose.’ In a single district of
Kussia, as above remarked, fifty-six thousand horses,
cows, and sheep, and five hundred and twenty-eight
men and women, perished in this way during a period
of two or three years. What the annual fatality is
throughout Europe I have no means of knowing.
Doubtless it must be very great. The question, then,

from the heat of their blood, which destroyed the bacillus, Pasteur
lowered their temperature artificially, inoculated them, and killed
them. He also raised the temperature of guinea-pigs after inocu-
lation, and saved them. It is needless to dwell for a moment on
the importance of this experiment.

fermentation.

287

which I wish to submit to your judgment is this Is
the knowledge which reveals to us the nature, and
which assures the extirpation, of a disorder so virulent
and so vile, worth the price paid for it ? It is exceed-
ingly important that assemblies like the present should
see clearly the issues at stake in such questions as this,
and that the properly informed sense of the community
should temper, if not restrain, the rashness of those
who, meaning to be tender, become agents of cruelty
by the imposition of short-sighted restrictions upon
physiological investigations. It is a modern instance
of zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, the
excesses of which must be corrected by an instructed
public opinion.

And now let us cast a backward glance on the field
we have traversed, and try to extract from our labours
such further profit as they can yield. For more than
two thousand years the attraction of light bodies by
amber was the sum of human knowledge regarding
electricity, and for more than two thousand years fer-
mentation was effected without any knowledge of its
cause. In science one discovery grows out of another,
and cannot appear without its proper antecedent. Thus,
before fermentation could be understood, the micro-
scope had to be invented, and brought to a considerable
degree of perfection. Note the growth of knowledge.
Leeuwenhoek, in 1680, found yeast to be amass of float-
ing globules, but he had no notion that the globules were
alive. This was proved in 1835 by Cagniard dela Tour
and Schwann. Then came the question as to the origin
of such microscopic organisms, and in this connection
the memoir of Pasteur, published in the 4 Annales de
Chimie’ for 1862, is the inauguration of a new epoch.
On that investigation all Pasteur’s subsequent

288

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

labours were based. Ravages had over and over again
occurred among French wines. There was no guarantee
that they would not become acid or bitter, particularly
when exported. The commerce in wines was thus
restricted, and disastrous losses were often inflicted on
the wine-grower. Every one of these diseases was
traced to the life of an organism. Pasteur ascertained
the temperature which killed these ferments of disease,
proving it to be so low as to be perfectly harmless to
the wine. By the simple expedient of heating the
wine to a temperature of fifty degrees Centigrade, he
rendered it inalterable, and thus saved his country the
loss of millions. He then went on to vinegar — vin
aigre , acid wine— which he proved to be produced by
a fermentation set up by a little fungus called
Mycoderma ccceti. Torula, in fact, converts the grape
juice into alcohol, and Mycoderma aceti converts the
alcohol into vinegar. Here also frequent failures
occurred, and severe losses were sustained. Through
the operation of unknown causes, the vinegar often
became unfit for use, sometimes indeed falling into utter
putridity. It had been long known that mere exposure
to the air was sufficient to destroy it. Pasteur studied
all these changes, traced them to their living causes,
and showed that the permanent health of the vinegar
was ensured by the destruction of this life. He passed
from the diseases of vinegar to the study of a malady
which a dozen years ago had all but ruined the silk
husbandry of France. This plague, which received the
name of pebrine , was the product of a parasite which
first took possession of the intestinal canal of the silk-
worm, spread throughout its body, and filled the sack
which ought to contain the viscid matter of the silk.
Thus smitten, the worm would go automatically through
the process of spinning when it had nothing to spin.

FERMENTATION.

289

Pasteur followed this parasitic destroyer from year to
year, and led by his singular power of combining facts
with the logic of facts, discovered eventually the
precise phase in the development of the insect when
the disease which assailed it could with certainty be
stamped out. Pasteur’s devotion to this enquiry cost
him dear. He restored to France her silk husbandry,
rescued thousands of her population from ruin, set the
looms of Italy also to work, but emerged from his
labours with one of his sides permanently paralysed.
His last investigation is embodied in a work entitled
‘ Studies on Beer,’ in which he describes a method
of rendering beer permanently unchangeable. That
method is nut so simple as those found effectual with
wine and vinegar, but the principles which it involves
are sure to receive extensive application at some future
day.

There are other reflections connected with this sub-
ject which, even were they now passed over without re-
mark, would sooner or later occur to every thoughtful
mind in this assembly. I have spoken of the floating
dust of the air, of the means of rendering it visible, and
of the perfect immunity from putrefaction which accom-
panies the contact of germless infusions and moteless air.
Consider the woes which these wafted particles, during
historic and pre-bistoric ages, have inflicted on man-
kind ; consider the loss of life in hospitals from putre-
fying wounds ; consider the loss in places where there
are plenty of wounds, but no hospitals, and in the ages
before hospitals were anywhere founded ; consider the
slaughter which has hitherto followed that of the battle-
field, when those bacterial destroyers are let loose, often
producing a mortality far greater than that of the
battle itself ; add to this the other conception that in
times of epidemic disease the self-same floating matter

VOL. II. u

290

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

has frequently, if not always, mingled with it the special
germs which produce the epidemic, being thus enabled
to sow pestilence and death over nations and continents
— consider all this, and you will come with me to the
conclusion that all the havoc of war, ten times multi-
plied, would be evanescent if compared with the ravages
due to atmospheric dust.

This preventible destruction is going on to-day, and
it has been permitted to go on for ages* without a whis-
per of information regarding its cause, being vouchsafed
to the suffering sentient world. We have been scourged
by invisible thongs, attacked from impenetrable ambus-
cades, and it is only to-day that the light of science is
being let in upon the murderous dominion of our foes.
Facts like these excite in me the thought that the rule
and governance of this universe are different from what
we in our youth supposed them to be — that the inscrut-
able Power, at once terrible and beneficent, in whom we
live and move and have our being and our end, is to be
propitiated by means different to those usually resorted
to. The first requisite towards such propitiation is
knowledge ; the second is action , shaped and illumi-
nated by that knowledge. Of knowledge we already
see the dawn, which will open out by-and-by to perfect
day ; while the action which is to follow has its un-
failing source and stimulus in the moral and emotional
nature of man — in his desire for personal well-being,
in his sense of duty, in his compassionate sympathy
with the sufferings of his fellow-men. ‘ How often,’ says
Dr. William Budd in his celebrated work on Typhoid
Fever,-—4 How often have I seen in past days, in the
single narrow chamber of the day-labourer’s cottage the
father in the coffin, the mother in the sick-bed in mut-
tering delirium, and nothing to relieve the desolation
of the children but the devotion of some poor neigh-

FERMENTATION.

291

hour, who in too many cases paid the penalty of her
kindness in becoming herself the victim of the same
disorder ! ’ From the vantage ground already won I look
forward with confident hope to the triumph of medical
art over scenes of misery like that here described. The
cause of the calamity being once clearly revealed, not
only to the physician, but to the public, whose intelli-
gent co-operation is absolutely essential to success, the
final victory of humanity is only a question of time. We
have already a foretaste of that victory in the triumphs
of surgery as practised at your doors.

292

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

XIII.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION}

WITHIN ten minutes’ walk of a little cottage which
I have recently built in the Alps, there is a
small lake, fed by the melted snows of the upper moun-
tains. During the early weeks of summer no trace of
life is to be discerned in this water ; but invariably
towards the end of July, or the beginning of August,
swarms of tailed organisms are seen enjoying the sun’s
warmth along the shallow margins of the lake, and
rushing with audible patter into deeper water at the
approach of danger. The origin of this periodic crowd
of living things is by no means obvious. For years I
had never noticed in the lake either an adult frog, or
the smallest fragment of frog spawn ; so that were I
not otherwise informed, I should have found the conclu-
sion of Mathiole a natural one, namely, that tadpoles
are generated in lake mud by the vivifying action of
the sun.

The checks which experience alone can furnish
being . absent, the spontaneous generation of creatures
quite as high as the frog in the scale of being was
assumed for ages to be a fact. Here, as elsewhere, the
dominant mind of Aristotle stamped its notions on the
world at large. For nearly twenty centuries after him
men found no difficulty in believing in cases of sponta-

1 The Nineteenth Century, January 1878.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

293

neous generation which would now be rejected as
monstrous by the most fanatical supporter of the
doctrine. Shell-fish of all kinds were considered to
be without parental origin. Eels were supposed to
spring spontaneously from the fat ooze of the Nile.
Caterpillars were the spontaneous products of the leaves
on which they fed ; while winged insects, serpents, rats,
and mice Avere all thought capable of being generated
without sexual intervention.

The most copious source of this life without an
ancestry was putrefying flesh ; and, lacking the checks
imposed by fuller investigation, the conclusion that
flesh possesses and exerts this generative power is a
natural one. I well remember when a child of ten or
twelve seeing a joint of imperfectly salted beef cut into,
and coils of maggots laid bare within the mass.
Without a moment’s hesitation I jumped to the con-
clusion that these maggots had been spontaneously
generated in the meat. I had no knowledge which
could qualify or oppose this conclusion, and for the
time it was irresistible. The childhood of the indi-
vidual typifies that of the race, and the belief here
enunciated was that of the world for nearly two thou-
sand years.

To the examination of this very point the celebra-
ted Francesco Eedi, physician to the Grand Dukes
Ferdinand II. and Cosmo III. of Tuscany, and a
member of the Academy del Cimento, addressed him-
self in 1668. He had seen the maggots of putrefying
flesh, and reflected on their possible origin. But he
was not content with mere reflection, nor with the
theoretic guesswork which his predecessors had founded
upon their imperfect observations. Watching meat
during its passage from freshness to decay, prior to the
appearance of maggots he invariably observed flies

294

*

FEAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

buzzing round the meat and frequently alighting on it.
The maggots, he thought, might be the half-developed
progeny of these flies.

The inductive guess precedes experiment, by which,
however, it must be finally tested. Redi knew this, and
acted accordingly. Placing fresh meat in a jar and
covering the mouth with paper, he found that, though
the meat putrefied in the ordinary way, it never bred
maggots, while the same meat placed in open jars soon
swarmed with these organisms. For the paper cover
he then substituted fine gauze, through which the
odour of the meat could rise. Over it the flies buzzed,
and on it they laid their eggs, but, the meshes being too
small to permit the eggs to fall through, no maggots
were generated in the meat. They were, on the con-
trary, hatched upon the gauze. By a series of such
experiments Redi destroyed the belief in the sponta-
neous generation of maggots in meat, and with it
doubtless many related beliefs. The combat was con-
tinued by Yallisneri, Schwammerdam, and Reaumur,
who succeeded in banishing the notion of spontaneous
generation from the scientific minds of their day.
Indeed, as regards such complex organisms as those
which formed the subject of their researches, the notion
was banished for ever.

But the discovery and improvement of the micro-
scope, though giving a death-blow to much that
had been previously written and believed regarding
spontaneous generation, brought also into view a world
of life formed of individuals so minute — so close as it
seemed to the ultimate particles of matter — as to sug-
gest an easy passage from atoms to organisms. Animal
and vegetable infusions exposed to the air were found
clouded and crowded with creatures far beyond the
reach of unaided vision, but perfectly visible to an eye

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

295

strengthened by the microscope. With reference to
their origin these organisms were called ‘Infusoria.
Stagnant pools were found full of them, and the
obvious difficulty of assigning a germinal origin to
existences so minute furnished the precise condition
necessary to give new play to the notion of hetero-
genesis or spontaneous generation.

The scientific world was soon divided into two hos-
tile camps, the leaders of which only can here be
briefly alluded to. On the one side, we have Buffon
and Needham, the former postulating his ‘ organic
molecules,’ and the latter assuming the existence of a
special ‘vegetative force’ which drew the molecules
together so as to form living things. On the other side,
we have the celebrated Abbe Lazzaro Spallanzani, who
in 1777 published results counter to those announced
by Needham in 1748, and obtained by methods so pre-
cise as to completely overthrow the convictions based
upon the labours of his predecessor. Charging his
flasks with organic infusions, he sealed their necks with
the blowpipe, subjected them in this condition to the
heat of boiling water, and subsequently exposed them
to temperatures favourable to the development of life.
The infusions continued unchanged for months, and
when the flasks were subsequently opened no trace of
life was found.

Here I may forestall matters so far as to say that
the success of Spallanzani’s experiments depended wholly
on the locality in which he worked. The air around
him must have been free from the more obdurate in-
fusorial germs, for otherwise the process he followed
would, as was long afterwards proved by Wyman, have
infallibly yielded life. But his refutation of the doc-
trine of spontaneous generation is not the less valid on
this account. Nor is it in any way upset by the fact,

296

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

that others in repeating his experiments obtained life
where he obtained none. Rather is the refutation
strengthened by such differences. Given two experi-
menters equally skilful and equally careful, operating
in different places on the same infusion, in the same
way, and assuming the one to obtain life while the other
fails to obtain it ; then its well-established absence in
the one case proves that some ingredient foreign to the
infusion must be its cause in the other.

Spallanzani’s sealed flasks contained but small quan-
tities of air, and as oxygen was afterwards shown to be
generally essential to life, it was thought that the
absence of life observed by Spallanzani might have
been due to the lack of this vitalising gas. To dissi-
pate this doubt, Schulze in 1836 half filled a flask with
distilled water to which animal and vegetable matters
were added. First boiling his infusion to destroy what-
ever life it might contain, Schulze sucked daily into
his flask air which had passed through a series of
bulbs containing concentrated sulphuric acid, where all
germs of life suspended in the air were supposed to be
destroyed. From May to August this process was
continued without any development of infusorial life.

Here again the success of Schulze was due to his
working in comparatively pure air, but even in such
air his experiment is a very risky one. Germs will
pass unwetted and unscathed through sulphuric acid
unless the most special care is taken to detain them.
I have repeatedly failed, by repeating Schulze’s experi-
ments, to obtain his results. Others have failed like-
wise. The air passes in bubbles through the bulbs, and
to render the method secure, the passage of the air must
be so slow as to cause the whole of its floating matter,
even to the very core of each bubble, to touch the sur-
rounding liquid. But if this precaution be observed,

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

297

water will be found quite as effectual ^s sulphuric acid.
By the aid of an air-pump, in a highly infective atmo-
sphere I have thus drawn air for weeks without inter-
mission, first through bulbs containing water, and
afterwards through vessels containing organic infusions,
without any appearance of life. The germs were not
killed by the water, but they were effectually intercepted,
while the objection that the air had been injured by
being brought into contact with strongly corrosive sub-
stances was avoided.

The brief paper of Schulze, published in Poggen-
dorf’s Annalen for 1836, was followed in 1837 by
another short and pregnant communication by Schwann.
Eedi, as we have seen, traced the maggots of putrefying
flesh to the eggs of flies. But he did not and he could
not know the meaning of putrefaction itself. He had
not the instrumental means to inform him that it also
is a phenomenon attendant on the development of life.
This was first proved in the paper now alluded to.
Schwann placed flesh in a flask filled to one-third of its
capacity with water, sterilised the flask by boiling, and
then supplied it for months with calcined air. Through-
out this time there appeared no mould, no infusoria,
no putrefaction ; the flesh remained unaltered, while
the liquid continued as clear as it was immediately
after boiling. Schwann then varied his experimental
argument, with no alteration in the result. His final
conclusion was, that putrefaction is due to decompositions
of organic matter attendant on the multiplication there-
in of minute organisms. These organisms were derived
not from the air, but from something contained in the
air, which was destroyed by a sufficiently high tempera-
ture. There never was a more determined opponent of
the doctrine of spontaneous generation than Schwann,
though a strange attempt was made a year and a half

298

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ago to enlist hiip and others equally opposed to it on
the side of the doctrine.

The physical character of the agent which produces
putrefaction was further revealed by Helmholtz in 1843.
By means of a membrane he separated a sterilised
putreseible liquid from a putrefying one. The steril-
ised infusion remained perfectly intact. Hence it was
not the liquid of the putrefying mass — for that could
freely diffuse through the membrane — but something
contained in the liquid, and which was stopped by
the membrane, that caused the putrefaction. In 1854
Schroeder and Von Dusch struck into this enquiry,
which was subsequently followed up by Schroeder alone.
These able experimenters employed plugs of cotton- wool
to filter the air supplied to their infusions. Fed with
such air, in the great majority of cases the putreseible
liquids remained perfectly sweet after boiling. Milk
formed a conspicuous exception to the general rule. It
putrefied after boiling, though supplied with carefully
filtered air. The researches of Schroeder bring us up
to the year 1859.

In that year a book was published which seemed to
overturn some of the best established facts of previous
investigators. Its title was Heterogenie , and its author
was F. A. Pouchet, Director of the Museum of Natural
History at Rouen. Ardent, laborious, learned, full not
only of scientific but of metaphysical fervour, he threw
his whole energy into the enquiry. Never did a subject
require the exercise of the cold critical faculty more
than this one — calm study in the unravelling of com-
plex phenomena, care in the preparation of experiments,
care in their execution, skilful variation of conditions,
and incessant questioning of results until repetition had
placed them beyond doubt or question. To a man of
Pouchet’s temperament the subject was full of danger

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

299

— danger not lessened by the theoretic bias with which
he approached it. This is revealed by the opening
words of his preface : 4 Lorsque, par la meditation, il
fut evident pour moi que la generation spontanee etait
encore Tun des moyens qu'emploie la nature pom la le-
production des etres, je m’appliquai a decouvrir pai
quels procedes on pouvait parvenir a en mettre les
phenomenes en evidence.’ It is needless to say that
such a prepossession required a strong curb. Pouchet
repeated the experiments of Schulze and Schwann with
results diametrically opposed to theirs. He heaped ex-
periment upon experiment and argument upon argu-
ment, spicing with the sarcasm of the advocate the
logic of the man of science. In view of the multitudes
required to produce the observed results, he ridiculed
the assumption of atmospheric germs. This was one
of his strongest points. ‘ Si les Proto-organismes que
nous voyons pulluler partout et dans tout, avaient leurs
germes dissemines dans l’atmosphere, dans la propor-
tion mathematiquement indispensable a cet effet, l’air
en serait totalement obscurci, car ils devraient sy
trouver beaucoup plus serres que les globules d’eau qui
forment nos nuages epais. II n’y a pas la la moindre
exageration.’ Recurring to the subject, he exclaims :
‘ L’air dans lequel nous vivons aurait presque la den-
site du fer.’ There is often a virulent contagion in a
confident tone, and this hardihood of argumentative
assertion was sure to influence minds swayed not by
knowledge, but by authority. Had Pouchet known
that 4 the blue ethereal sky ’ is formed of suspended
particles, through which the sun freely shines, he would
hardly have ventured upon this line of argument.

Pouchet’s pursuit of this enquiry strengthened the
conviction with which he began it, and landed him in
downright credulity in the end. I do not question

300

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

his ability as an observer, but the enquiry needed a
disciplined experimenter. This latter implies not mere
ability to look at tilings as Nature offers them to our
inspection, but to force her to show herself under con-
ditions prescribed by the experimenter himself. Here
Pouchet lacked the necessary discipline. Yet the
vigour of his onset raised clouds of doubt, which for a
time obscured the whole field of enquiry. So difficult
indeed did the subject seem, and so incapable of definite
solution, thai when Pasteur made known his intention
to take it up, his friends Biot and Dumas expressed
their regret, earnestly exhorting him to set a definite
and rigid limit to the time he purposed spending in
this apparently unprofitable field.1

Schooled by his education as a chemist, and by
special researches on the closely related question of
fermentation, Pasteur took up this subject under par-
ticularly favourable conditions. His work and his
culture had given strength and finish to his natural
aptitudes. In 1862, accordingly, he published a paper
‘ On the Organised Corpuscles existing in the Atmo-
sphere,’ which must for ever remain classical. By the
most ingenious devices he collected the floating par-
ticles of the air surrounding his laboratory in the Rue
d’Ulm, and subjected them to microscopic examination.
Many of them he found to be organised particles. Sow-
ing them in sterilised infusions, he obtained abundant
crops of microscopic organisms. By more refined
methods he repeated and confirmed the experiments of
Schwann, which had been contested by Pouchet, Monte-
gazza, Joly, and Musset. He also confirmed the ex-

1 ‘ Je ne conseillerais & personae,’ saicl Dumas to his already
famous pupil, ‘de rester trop longtemps dans ce sujet.’ — Annales de
Chimie et de Physique, 1862, vol. lxiv. p. 22. Since that time the
illustrious Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences has had
good reason to revise this * counsel.’

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

301

periments of Schroeder and Von Dusch. He showed
that the cause which communicated life to his infusions
was not uniformly diffused through the air ; that there
were aerial interspaces which possessed no power to
generate life. Standing on the Mer de Glace, near the
Montanvert, he snipped off the ends of a number of
hermetically sealed flasks containing organic infusions.
One out of twenty of the flasks thus supplied with
glacier air showed signs of life afterwards, while eight
out of twenty of the same infusions, supplied with the
air of the plains, became crowded with life. He took
his flasks into the caves under the Observatory of Paris,
and found the still air in these caves devoid of genera-
tive power. These and other experiments, carried out
with a severity perfectly obvious to the instructed
scientific reader, and accompanied by a logic equally
severe, restored the conviction that, even in these lower
reaches of the scale of being, life does not appear with-
out the operation of antecedent life.

The main position of Pasteur has been strengthened
by practical researches of the most momentous kind.
He has applied the knowledge won from his enquiries
to the preservation of wine and beer, to the manufacture
of vinegar, to the staying of the plague which threatened
utter destruction of the silk husbandry of France, and
to the examination of other formidable diseases which
assail the higher animals, including man. His relation to
the improvements which Professor Lister has introduced
into surgery, is shown by a letter quoted in his Etudes
sur la Biere.1 Professor Lister there expressly thanks
Pasteur for having given him the only principle which
could have conducted the antiseptic system to a suc-
cessful issue. The strictures regarding defects of
reasoning, to which we have been lately accustomed,

1 P.43.

302 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

throw abundant light upon their author, but no shade
upon Pasteur.

Redi, as we have seen, proved the maggots of putre-
fying flesh to be derived from the eggs of flies ; Schwann
proved putrefaction itself to be the concomitant of
far lower forms of life than those dealt with by Redi.
•Our knowledge here, as elsewhere in connection with
this subject, has been vastly extended by Professor
Cohn, of Breslau. ‘ No putrefaction,’ he says, ‘ can occur
in a nitrogenous substance if its bacteria be destroyed
and new ones prevented from entering it. Putrefaction
begins as soon as bacteria, even in the smallest numbers,
are admitted either accidentally or purposely. It
progresses in direct proportion to the multiplication
of the bacteria, it is retarded when they exhibit low
vitality, and is stopped by all influences which either
hinder their development or kill them. All bactericidal
media are therefore antiseptic and disinfecting.’1 It
was these organisms acting in wound and abscess which
so frequently converted our hospitals into charnel-
houses, and it is their destruction by the antiseptic
system that now renders justifiable operations which no
surgeon would have attempted a few years ago. The
gain is immense — -to the practising surgeon as well as
to the patient practised upon. Contrast the anxiety of
never feeling sure whether the most brilliant operation
might not be rendered nugatory by the access of a few
particles of unseen hospital dust, with the comfort
derived from the knowledge that all power of mischief
on the part of such dust has been surely and certainly

1 In his last excellent memoir Cohn expresses himself thus:

< \yer noch heut die Faulniss von einer spontanen Dissociation der
Proteinmolecule, oder von einem unorganisirten Ferment ableitet,
oder gar airs “ Stickstoffsplittern ” die Balken zur Stiitze seiner
Faulnisstheorie zu zimmern versucht, hat zuerst den Satz “ keine
Faulniss ohne Bacterium Termo ” zu widerlegen.’

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 303 '

annihilated. But the action of living contagia extends
beyond the domain of the surgeon. The power of re-
production and indefinite self-multiplication which is
characteristic of living things, coupled with the un-
deviating fact of contagia 4 breeding true,’ has given
strength and consistency to a belief long entertained by
penetrating minds, that epidemic diseases generally are
the concomitants of parasitic life. ‘ There begins to be
faintly visible to us a vast and destructive laboratory of
nature wherein the diseases which are most fatal to ani-
mal life, and the changes to which dead organic matter
is passively liable, appear bound together by what must
at least be called a very close analogy of causation.’ 1
According to this view, which, as I have said, is daily
gaining converts, a contagious disease may be defined
as a conflict between the person smitten by it and a
specific organism which multiplies at his expense,
appropriating his air and moisture, disintegrating his
tissues, or poisoning him by the decompositions incident
to its growth.

During the ten years extending from 1859 to 1869,
researches on radiant heat in its relations to the gas-
eous form of matter occupied my continual attention.
When air was experimented on, I had to cleanse it
effectually of floating matter, and while doing- so X was
surprised to notice that, at the ordinary rate of transfer,
such matter passed freely through alkalis, acids, alcohols,
and ethers. The eye being kept sensitive by darkness
a concentrated beam of light was found to be a most
searching test for suspended matter both in water
and in air — a test indeed indefinitely more searchino-
and severe than that furnished by the most powerful
microscope. With the aid of such a beam I examined

1 Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1874, p 5

304

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

air filtered by cotton-wool ; air long kept free from
agitation, so as to allow the floating matter to subside ;
calcined air, and air filtered by the deeper cells of the
human lungs. In all cases the correspondence between
my experiments and those of Schroeder, Pasteur, aDd
Lister in regard to spontaneous generation was perfect.
The air which they found inoperative was proved by
the luminous beam to be optically pure and therefore
germless. Having worked at the subject both by expe-
riment and reflection, on Friday evening, January 21,
1870, I brought it before the members of the Royal
Institution. Two or three months subsequently, for
sufficient practical reasons, I ventured to direct public
attention to the subject in a letter to the Times.
Such was my first contact with this important question.

This letter, I believe, gave occasion for the first
public utterance of Dr. Bastian in relation to this
subiect. He did me the honour to inform me, as others
had informed Pasteur, that the subject ‘ pertains to the
biologist and physician.’ He expressed ‘ amazement ’
at my reasoning, and warned me that before what I had
done could be undone ‘much irreparable mischief might
be occasioned.’ With far less preliminary experience to
guide and warn him, the English heterogenist was far
bolder than Pouchet in his experiments, and far more
adventurous in his conclusions. With organic infusions
be obtained the results of his celebrated predecessor,
but he did much more — the atoms and molecules of in-
organic liquids passing under his manipulation into
those more ‘ complex chemical compounds,’ which we
dignify by calling them ‘ living organisms.’ 1 As re-

1 ‘ It is further held that bacteria or allied organisms are prone
to be engendered as correlative products, coming into existence in
the several fermentations, just as independently as other less
complex chemical compounds.’ — Bastian, Trans, of Pathological
Society , vol. xxvi. 258.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

305

gards the public who take an interest in such things,
and apparently also as regards a large portion of the
medical profession, our clever countryman succeeded in
restoring the subject to a state of uncertainty similar to
that which followed the publication of Pouchet’s volume
in 1859.

It is desirable that this uncertainty should be
removed from all minds, and doubly desirable on
practical grounds that it should be removed from the
minds of medical men. In the present article, there-
fore. I propose discussing this question face to face with
some eminent and fair-minded member of the medical
profession who, as regards spontaneous generation, en-
tertains views adverse to mine. Such a one it would
l>e easy to name ; but it is perhaps better to rest in the
impersonal. I shall therefore simply call my proposed
co-enquirer my friend. With him at my side, I shall
endeavour, to the best of my ability, so to conduct this
discussion that he who runs may read and that he who
reads may understand.

Let us begin at the beginning. I ask my friend to
step into the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where
I place before him a basin of thin turnip slices barely
covered with distilled water kept
at a temperature of 120° Fahr.

After digesting the turnip for
four or five hours we pour off the
liquid, boil it, filter it, and obtain
an infusion as clear as filtered
drinking water. We cool the in-
fusion, test its specific gravity,
and find it to be 1006 or higher
— water being 1000. A number
of small clean empty flasks, of the
shape shown on the margin, are before us. One of them

VOL. II.

x

306

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

is slightly warmed with a spirit-lamp, and its open end
is then dipped into the turnip infusion. The warmed
glass is afterwards chilled, the air within the flasks
cools, contracts, and is followed in its contraction by
the infusion. Thus we get a small quantity of liquid
into the flask. We now heat this liquid carefully.
Steam is produced, which issues from the open neck,
carrying the air of the flask along with it. After a few
seconds’ ebullition, the open neck is again plunged
into the infusion. The steam within the flask con-
denses, the liquid enters to supply its place, and in
this way we fill our little flask to about four- fifths of
its volume. This description is typical ; we may thus
fill a thousand flasks with a thousand different infusions.

I now ask my friend to notice a trough made of
sheet copper, with two rows of handy little Bunsen
burners underneath it. This trough, or bath, is nearly
filled with oil ; a piece of thin plank constitutes a kind
of lid for the oil-bath. The wood is perforated with
circular apertures wide enough to allow our small flask
to pass through and plunge itself in the oil, which has
been heated, say, to 250° Fahr. Clasped all round by
the hot liquid, the infusion in the flask rises to its
boiling point, which is not sensibly over 212° Fahr.
Steam issues from the open neck of the flask, and the
boiling is continued for five minutes. With a pair of
small brass tongs, an assistant now seizes the neck near
its junction with the flask, and partially lifts the latter
out of the oil. The steam does not cease to issue, but
its violence is abated. With a second pair of tongs held
in one hand, the neck of the flask is seized close to its
open end, while with the other hand a Bunsen’s flame
or an ordinary spirit flame is brought under the middle
of the neck. The glass reddens, whitens, softens, and
as it is gently drawn out the neck diminishes in dia-

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

307

meter, until the canal is completely blocked up. 1 he
tongs with the fragment of severed neek being with-
drawn, the flask, with its contents diminished by evapo-
ration, is lifted from the oil-bath perfectly sealed
hermetically.

Sixty such flasks filled, boiled, and sealed in the
manner described, and containing strong infusions of
beef, mutton, turnip, and cucumber, are carefully
packed in sawdust, and transported to the Alps.
Thither, to an elevation of about 7,000 feet above the
sea, I invite my co-enquirer to accompany me. It is
the month of July, and the weather is favourable to
putrefaction. We open our box at the Bel- Alp, and
count out fifty-four flasks, with their liquids as clear as
filtered drinking water. In six flasks, however, the in-
fusion is found muddy. We closely examine these, and
discover that every one of them has had its fragile end
broken off in the transit from London. Air has entered
the flasks, and the observed muddiness is the result.
My colleague knows as well as I do what this means.
Examined with a pocket-lens, or even with a microscope
of insufficient power, nothing is seen in the muddy
liquid ; but regarded with a magnifying power of a
thousand diameters or so, what an astonishing appear-
ance does it present ! Leeuwenhoek estimated the
population of a single drop of stagnant water at
500,000,000 : probably the population of a drop of our
turbid infusion would be this many times multiplied.
The field of the microscope is crowded with organisms,
some wabbling slowly, others shooting rapidly across
the microscopic field. They dart hither and thither
like a rain of minute projectiles ; they pirouette and
spin so quickly round, that the retention of the retinal
impression transforms the little living rod into a
twirling wheel. And yet the most celebrated naturalists

308

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

tell us they are vegetables. From the rod-like shape
which they so frequently assume, these organisms are
called ‘ bacteria ’ — a term, he it here remarked, which
covers organisms of very diverse kinds.

Has this multitudinous life been spontaneously
generated in these six flasks, or is it the progeny of
living germinal matter carried into the flasks by the
entering air? If the infusions have a self-generative
power, how are the sterility and consequent clearness of
the fifty-four uninjured flasks to he accounted for ?
My colleague may urge — and fairly urge — that the
assumption of germinal matter is by no means neces-
sary ; that the air itself may he the one thing needed
to wake up the dormant infusions. We will examine
this point immediately. But meanwhile I would remind
him that I am working on the exact lines laid down
by our most conspicuous heterogenist. He distinctly
affirms that the withdrawal of the atmospheric pressure
above the infusion favours the production of oi'ganisms ;
and he accounts for their absence in tins of preserved
meat, fruit, and vegetables, by the hypothesis that
fermentation has begun in such tins, that gases have
been generated, the pressure of which has stifled the
incipient life and stopped its further development.1
This is the new theory of preserved meats. Had its
author pierced a tin of preserved meat, fruit, or vege-
table under water with the view of testing its truth, he
would have found it erroneous. In well-preserved tins
he would have found, not an outrush of gas, but an
inrush of water. I have noticed this recently in tins
which have lain perfectly good for sixty-three years in
the .Royal Institution. Modern tins, subjected to the
same test, yielded the same result. From time to time,
moreover, during the last two years, I have placed glass
1 Beginnings of Life, vol. i. p. 418.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

309

tubes, containing clear infusions of turnip, hay, beef,
and mutton, in iron bottles, and subjected them to
air-pressures varying from ten to twenty-seven atmo-
spheres— pressures, it is needless to say, far more than
sufficient to tear a preserved meat tin to shreds. After
ten days these infusions were taken from their bottles
rotten with putrefaction and teeming with life. Thus
collapses an hypothesis which had no rational foundation,
and which could never have seen the light had the
slightest attempt been made to verify it.

Our fifty-four vacuous and pellucid flasks also declare
against the heterogenist. We expose them to a warm
Alpine sun by day, and at night we suspend them in a
warm kitchen. Four of them have been accidentally
broken ; but at the end of a month we find the fifty
remaining ones as clear as at the commencement.
There is no sign of putrefaction or of life in any of
them. We divide these flasks into two groups of
twenty-three and twenty-seven respectively (an accident
of counting rendered the division uneven). The ques-
tion now is whether the admission of air can liberate
any generative energy in the infusions. Our next
experiment will answer this question and something
more. We carry the flasks to a hayloft, and there,
with a pair of steel pliers, snip off the sealed ends of
the group of three-and-twenty. Each snipping off is
of course followed by an inrush of air. We now carry
our twenty-seven flasks, our pliers, and a spirit-lamp,
to a ledge overlooking the Aletsch glacier, about 200
feet above the hayloft, from which ledge the mountain
falls almost precipitously to the north-east for about a
thousand feet. A gentle wind blows towards us from
the north-east — that is, across the crests and snow-fields
of the Oberland mountains. We are therefore bathed
by air which must have been for a good while out of

310

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

practical contact with either animal or vegetable life.
I stand carefully to leeward of the flasks, for no dust
or particle from my clothes or body must be blown
towards them. An assistant ignites the spirit-lamp,
into the flame of which I plunge the pliers, thereby
destroying all attached germs or organisms. Then I
snip ofF the sealed end of the flask. Prior to every
snipping the same process is gone through, no flask
being opened without the previous cleansing of the
pliers by the flame. In this way we charge our seven-
and-twenty flasks with clean vivifying mountain air.

We place the fifty flasks, with their necks open,
over a kitchen stove, in a temperature varying from 50°
to 90° Fahr., and in three days find twenty-one out of
the twenty-three flasks opened on the hayloft invaded
by organisms — two only of the group remaining free
from them. After three weeks’ exposure to precisely
the same conditions, not one of the twenty-seven flasks
opened in free air had given way. No germ from the
kitchen air had ascended the narrow necks, the flasks
being shaped to produce this result. They are still in
the Alps, as clear, I doubt not, and as free from life as
they were when sent off from London.1

What is my colleague’s conclusion from the experi-
ment before us ? Twenty-seven putrescible infusions,
first in vacuo, and afterwards supplied with the most
invigorating air, have shown no sign of putrefaction
or of life. And as to the others, I almost shrink from
asking him whether the hayloft has rendered them
spontaneously generative. Is not the inference here
imperative that it is not the air of the loft — which is
connected through a constantly open door with the
general atmosphere — but something contained in the

1 An actual experiment made at the Bel Alp is here described.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

311

air, that has produced the effects observed ? What is
this something ? A sunbeam entering through a chink
in the roof or wall, and traversing the air of the loft,
would show it to be laden with suspended dust particles.
Indeed the dust is distinctly visible in the diffused day-
light. Can it have been the origin of the observed life ?
If so, are we not bound by all antecedent experience to
regard these fruitful particles as the germs of the life
observed ?

The name of Baron Liebig has been constantly
mixed up with these discussions. ‘ We have,’ it is said,

4 his authority for assuming that dead decaying matter
can produce fermentation.’ True, but with Liebig
fermentation was by no means synonymous with life .
It meant, according to him, the shaking asunder by
chemical disturbance of unstable molecules. Does the
life of our flasks, then, proceed from dead particles ?
If my co-enquirer should reply 4 Yes,’ then I would ask
him, 4 What warrant does Nature offer for such an
assumption ? Where, amid the multitude of vital,
phenomena in which her operations have been clearly
traced, is the slightest countenance given to the notion
that the sowing of dead particles can produce a living
crop ? ’ With regard to Baron Liebig, had he studied
the revelations of the microscope in relation to these
questions, a mind so penetrating could never have
missed the significance of the facts revealed. He, how-
ever, neglected the microscope, and fell into error — but
not into error so gross as that in support of which his
authority has been invoked. Were he now alive, he
would, I doubt not, repudiate the use often made of his
name — Liebig’s view of fermentation was at least a
scientific one, founded on profound conceptions of
molecular instability. But this view by no means
involves the notion that the planting of dead particles

312

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

— c Stickstoffsplittern ’ as Cohn contemptuously calls
them — is followed by the sprouting of infusorial life.

Let us now return to London and fix our attention
on the dust of its air. Suppose a room in which the
housemaid has just finished her work to be completely
closed, with the exception of an aperture in a shutter
through which a sunbeam enters and crosses the room.
The floating dust reveals the track of the light. Let
a lens be placed in the aperture to condense the beam.
Its parallel rays are now converged to a cone, at the
apex of which the dust is raised to almost unbroken
whiteness by the intensify of its illumination. Defended
from all glare, the eye is peculiarly sensitive to this
scattered light. The floating dust of London rooms is
organic, and may be burned without leaving visible
residue. The action of a spirit-lamp flame upon the
floating matter has been elsewhere thus described : —

In a cylindrical beam which strongly illuminated the
dust of our laboratory, I placed an ignited spirit-lamp.
Mingling with the flame, and round its rim, were seen
curious wreaths of darkness resembling an intensely black
smoke. On placing the flame at some distance below the
beam, the same dark masses stormed upwards. They were
blacker than the blackest smoke ever seen issuing from the
funnel of a steamer ; and them resemblance to smoke was
so perfect as to prompt the conclusion that the apparently
pure flame of the alcohol-lamp required but a beam ot
sufficient intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.

But is the blackness smoke? This question presented
itself in a moment, and was thus answered : A red-hot
poker was placed underneath the beam j from it the black
wreaths also ascended. A large hydrogen flame, w hich
emits no smoke, was next employed, and it also produced
with augmented copiousness those whirling masses ot dark*
ness. Smoke being out of the question, what is the black*

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

313

ness 1 It is simply that of stellar space \ that is to say ,
blackness resulting from the absence from the track of the
beam of all matter competent to scatter its light. When
the flame was placed below the beam, the floating matter
was destroyed in situ \ and the heated air, freed from this
matter, rose into the beam, jostled aside the illuminated
particles, and substituted for their light the darkness due to
its own perfect transparency. Nothing could more forcibly
illustrate the invisibility of the agent which renders all
things visible. The beam crossed, unseen, the black chasm
formed by the transparent air, while, at both sides of the
gap, the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous
solid under the powerful illumination.1

Supposing an infusion intrinsically barren, but
readily susceptible of putrefaction when exposed to
common air, to be brought into contact with this un-
illuminable air, what would be the result ? It would
never putrefy. It might, however, be urged that the
air is spoiled by its violent calcination. Oxygen passed
through a spirit-lamp flame is, it may be thought, no
longer the oxygen suitable for the development and
maintenance of life. We have an easy escape from this
difficulty, which is based, however, upon the unproved
assumption that the air has been affected by the flame.
Let a condensed beam be sent through a large flask or
bolthead containing common air. The track of the
beam is seen within the flask — the dust revealing the
light, and the light revealing the dust. Cork the flask,
stuff its neck with cotton-wool, or simply turn it mouth
downwards and leave it undisturbed for a flay or two.
Examined afterwards with the luminous beam, no track
is visible ; the light passes through the flask as through
a vacuum. The floating matter has abolished itself,
being now attached to the interior surface of the flask.

1 See page 133, vol. i,

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

SI 4

Were it our object, as it will be subsequently, to effec-
tually detain the dirt, we might coat that surface with
some sticky substance. Here, then, without 4 torturing ’
the air in any way, we have found a means of ridding

QP

it, or rather of enabling it to rid itself, of floating
matter.

We have now to devise a means of testing the action
of such spontaneously purified air upon putrescible
infusions. Wooden chambers, or cases, are accordingly

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

315

constructed, having glass fronts, side-windows, and
back-doors. Through the bottoms of the chambers
test-tubes pass air-tight ; their open ends, for about
one-fifth of the length of the tubes, being within the
chambers. Provision is made for a free connection
through sinuous channels between the inner and the
outer air. Through such channels, though open, no
dust will reach the chamber. The top of each chamber
is perforated by a circular hole two inches in diameter,
closed air-tight by a sheet of india-rubber. This is
pierced in the middle by a pin, and through the pin-
hole is pushed the shank of a long pipette, ending
above in a small funnel. The shank also passes through
a stuffing-box of cotton-wool moistened with glycerine;
so that, tightly clasped by the rubber and wool, the
pipette is not likely in its motions up and down to carry
any dust into the chamber. The annexed woodcut
shows a chamber, with six test-tubes, its side-windows
w w, its pipette p c, and its sinuous channels a b w'hich
connect the air of the chamber with the outer air.

The chamber is carefully closed and permitted to
remain quiet for two or three days. Examined at the
beginning by a beam sent through its windows, the air
is found laden with floating matter, which in three
days has wholly disappeared. To prevent its ever
rising again, the internal surface of the chamber was
at the outset coated with glycerine. The fresh but
putrescible liquid is introduced into the six tubes in
succession by means of the pipette. Permitted to
remain without further precaution, every one of the
tubes would putrefy and fill itself with life. The liquid
has been in contact with the dust-laden air outside by
which it has been infected, and the infection must be
destroyed. This is done by plunging the six tubes into
a bath of heated oil and boiling the infusion. The time

316

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

requisite to destroy the infection depends wholly upon
its nature. Two minutes’ boiling suffices to destroy some
contagia, whereas two hundred minutes’ boiling fails
to destroy others. After the infusion has been sterilised,
the oil-bath is withdrawn, and the liquid, whose put re-
scibility has been in no way affected by the boiling, is
abandoned to the air of the chamber.

With such chambers I tested, in the autumn and
winter of 1875-6, infusions of the most various kinds,
embracing natural animal liquids, the flesh and viscera
of domestic animals, game, fish, and vegetables. More
than fifty chambers, each with its series of infusions,
were tested, many of them repeatedly. There was no
shade of uncertainty in any of the results. In every
instance we had, within the chamber, perfect limpidity
and sweetness, which in some cases lasted for more than
a year — without the chamber, with the same infusion,
putridity and its characteristic smells. In no instance
was the least countenance lent to the notion that an
infusion deprived by heat of its inherent life, and placed
in contact with air cleansed of its visibly suspended
matter, has any power to generate life anew.

Remembering then the number and variety of the
infusions employed, and the strictness of our adherence
to the rules of preparation laid down by the hetero-
genists themselves ; remembering that we have operated
upon the very substances recommended by them as
capable of furnishing, even in untrained hands, easy and
decisive proofs of spontaneous generation, and that we
have added to their substances many others of our own
— if this pretended generative power were a reality,
surely it must have manifested itself somewhere.
Speaking roundly, I should say that in such closed
chambers at least five hundred chances have been given
to it, but it has nowhere appeared.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

317

The argument is now to be clenched by an experi-
ment which will remove every residue of doubt as to the
ability of the infusions here employed to sustain life. We
open the back doors of our sealed chambers, and permit
the common air with its floating particles to have access
to our tubes. For three months they have remained
pellucid and sweet — flesh, fish, and vegetable extracts
purer than ever cook manufactured. Three days’
exposure to the dusty air suffices to render them
muddy, fetid, and swarming with infusorial life. The
liquids are thus proved, one and all, ready for putre-
faction when the contaminating agent is applied. I
invite my colleague to reflect on these facts. How will
he account for the absolute immunity of a liquid
exposed for months in a warm room to optically pure
air, and its infallible putrefaction in a few days when
exposed to dust- laden air ? He must, I submit, bow
to the conclusion that the dust-particles are the cause
of putrefactive life. And unless he accepts the hypo-
thesis that these particles, being dead in the air, are
in the liquid miraculously kindled into living things,
lie must conclude that the life we have observed springs
from germs or organisms diffused through the atmo-
sphere.

The experiments with hermetically sealed flasks
have reached the number of 940. A sample group of
130 of them were laid before the Royal Society on
January 13, 1876. They were utterly free from life,
having been completely sterilised by three minutes’
boiling. Special care had been taken that the tempe-
ratures to which the flasks were exposed should include
those previously alleged to be efficient. The conditions
laid down by the heterogenist were accurately copied,
but there was no corroboration of his results. Stress
was then laid on the question of warmth, thirty degrees

318 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

being suddenly added to the temperatures with which
botli of us had previously worked. Waiving all protest
against the caprice thus manifested, I met this new
requirement also. The sealed tubes, which had proved
barren in the lvoyal Institution, were suspended in per-
forated boxes, and placed under the supervision of an
intelligent assistant in the Turkish Bath in Jermyn
Street. From two to six days had been allowed for
the generation of organisms in hermetically sealed
tubes. Mine remained in the washing-room of the
bath for nine days. Thermometers placed in the boxes,
and read off twice or three times a day, showed the
temperature to vary from a minimum of 101° to a
maximum of 112° Fahr. At the end of nine days the
infusions were as clear as at the beginning. They
were then removed to a warmer position. A tempera-
ture of 115° had been mentioned as particularly favour-
able to spontaneous generation. For fourteen days
the temperature of the Turkish Bath hovered about
this point, falling once as low as 106°, reaching 116°
on three occasions, 118° on one, and 119° on two. The
• result was quite the same as that just recorded. The
higher temperatures proved perfectly incompetent to
develope life.

Taking the actual experiment we have made as a
basis of calculation, if our 940 flasks were opened on
the hayloft of the Bel Alp, 858 of them would become
filled with organisms. The escape of the remaining 82
strengthens our case, proving as it does conclusively
that not in the air, nor in the infusions, nor in anything
continuous diffused through the air, but in discrete
particles, suspended in the air and nourished by the
infusions, we are to seek the cause of life. Our experi-
ment proves these particles to be in some cases so far
apart on the hayloft as to permit 10 per cent, of our

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

319

flasks to take in air without contracting contamination.
A quarter of a century ago Pasteur proved the cause of
‘ so-called spontaneous generation ’ to be discontinuous.
I have already referred to his observation that 12 out
of 20 flasks opened on the plains escaped infection,
while 19 out of 20 flasks opened on the Mer de Glace
escaped. Our own experiment at the Bel Alp is a
more emphatic instance of the same kind, 90 per cent,
of the flasks opened in the hayloft being smitten, while
not one of those opened on the free mountain ledge was
attacked.

The power of the air as regards putrefactive infec-
tion is incessantly changing through natural causes, and
we are able to alter it at will. Of a number of flasks
opened in 1876 in the laboratory of the Royal Institu-
tion, 42 per cent, were smitten, while 5S per cent, es-
caped. In 1877 the proportion in the same laboratory
was 68 per cent, smitten, to 32 intact. The greater
mortality, so to speak, of the infusions in 1877 was due
to the presence of hay which diffused its germinal dust
in the laboratory air, causing it to approximate as re-
gards infective virulence to the air of the Alpine loft.
I would ask my friend to bring his scientific penetration
to bear upon all the foregoing facts. They do not
prove spontaneous generation to be ‘impossible.’ My
assertions, however, relate not to ‘ possibilities,’ but to
•proofs, and the experiments just described do most
distinctly prove the evidence on which the heterogenist
relies to be written on waste paper.

My colleague will not, I am persuaded, dispute these
results ; but he may be disposed to urge that other able
and honourable men working at the same subject have
arrived at conclusions different from mine. Most freely
granted ; but let me here recur to the remarks already
made in speaking of the experiments of Spallanzani,

320

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

to the effect that the failure of others to confirm his
results by no means upsets their evidence. To fix the
ideas, let us suppose that my colleague comes to the
laboratory of the Royal Institution, repeats there my
experiments, and obtains confirmatory results ; and
that he then goes to University or King’s College
where, operating with the same infusions, he obtains
contradictory results. Will he be disposed to conclude
that the selfsame substance is barren in Albemarle
Street and fruitful in Gower Street or the Strand ?
His Alpine experience has already made known to him
the literally infinite differences existing between diffe-
rent samples of air as regards their capacity for putre-
factive infection. And, possessing this knowledge, will
he not substitute for the adventurous conclusion that
an organic infusion is barren at one place and sponta-
neously generative at another, the more rational and
obvious one that the atmospheres of the two localities
which have had access to the infusion are infective in
different degrees ?

As regards workmanship, moreover, he will not fail
to bear in mind, that fruitfulness maybe due to errors
of manipulation, while barrenness involves the pre-
sumption of correct experiment. It is only the careful
worker that can secure the latter, while it is open to
every novice to obtain the former. Barrenness is the
result at which the conscientious experimenter, whatever
his theoretic convictions may be, ought to aim, omit-
ting no pains to secure it, and resorting only when
there is no escape from it to the conclusion that the
life observed comes from no source which correct experi-
ment could neutralise or avoid.

Let us again take a definite case. Supposing my
colleague to operate with the same apparent care on
100 infusions — or rather on 100 samples of the same in-

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

321

fusion — and that 50 of them prove fruitful and 50 bar-
ren. Are we to say that the evidence for and against
heterogeny is equally balanced ? There are some who
would not only say this, but who would treasure up the
50 fruitful flasks as ‘positive’ results, and lower the
evidential value of the 50 barren flasks by labelling
them ‘ negative ’ results. This, as shown by Dr.
William Roberts, is an exact inversion of the true order
of the terms positive and negative.1 Not such, I trust,
would be the course pursued by my friend. As regards
the 50 fruitful flasks he would, I doubt not, repeat the
experiment with redoubled care and scrutiny, and not
by one repetition only, but by many, assure himself
that he had not fallen into error. Such faithful scru-
tiny fully carried out would infallibly lead him to the
conclusion that here, as in all other cases, the evidence
in favour of spontaneous generation crumbles in the
grasp of the competent enquirer.

The botanist knows that different seeds possess
different powers of resistance to heat.2 Some are
killed by a momentary exposure to the boiling tem-
perature, while others withstand it for several hours.
Most of our ordinary seeds are rapidly killed, while
Pouchet made known to the Paris Academy of Sciences
in 1866, that certain seeds, which had been transported
in fleeces of wool from Brazil, germinated after four
hours’ boiling. The germs of the air vary as much
among themselves as the seeds of the botanist. In
some localities the diffused germs are so tender that

1 See his truly philosophical remarks on this head in the ‘ British
Medical Journal,’ 1876, p. 282.

2 I am indebted to Dr. Thiselton Dyer for various illustrations
of such differences. It is, however, surprising that a subject of such
high scientific importance should not have been more thoroughly
explored. Here the scoundrels who deal in killed seeds might be
able to add to our knowledge.

VOL. II.

Y

322

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

boiling for five minutes, or even less, would be sure to
destroy them all ; in other localities the diffused germs
are so obstinate, that many hours’ boiling would be
requisite to deprive them of their power of germina-
tion. The absence or presence of a truss of desiccated
hay would produce differences as great as those here
described. The greatest endurance that I have ever
observed — and I believe it is the greatest on record —
was a case of survival after eight hours’ boiling.

As regards their power of resisting heat, the in-
fusorial germs of our atmosphere might be classified
under the following and intermediate heads : — Killed in
five minutes ; not killed in five minutes but killed in
fifteen ; not killed in fifteen minutes but killed in
thirty ; not killed in thirty minutes but killed in an
hour ; not killed in an hour but killed in two hours ;
not killed in two but killed in three hours ; not killed
in three but killed in four hours. I have had several
cases of survival after four and five hours’ boiling, some
survivals after six, and one after eight hours’ boiling.
Thus far has experiment actually reached ; but there is
no valid warrant for fixing upon even eight hours as
the extreme limit of vital resistance. Probably more
extended researches (though mine have been very exten-
sive) would reveal germs more obstinate still. It is
also certain that we might begin earlier, and find germs
which are destroyed by a temperature far below that of
boiling water. In the presence of such facts, to speak
of a death-point of bacteria and their germs would be
unmeaning — but of this more anon.

‘ What present warrant,’ it has been asked, ‘ is there
for supposing that a naked, or almost naked, speck ot
protoplasm can withstand four, six, or eight hours’
boiling?’ Regarding naked specks of protoplasm I
make no assertion. I know nothing about them, save

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

323

as the creatures of fancy. But I do affirm, not as a
‘ supposition,’ nor an ‘ assumption,’ nor a ‘ probable
guess,’ nor as ‘ a wild hypothesis,’ but as a matter of
the most undoubted fact, that the spores of the hay
bacillus, when thoroughly desiccated by age, have
withstood the ordeal mentioned. And I further affirm
that these obdurate germs, under the guidance of the
knowledge that they are germs, can be destroyed by
five minutes’ boiling, or even less. This needs explana-
tion. The finished bacterium perishes at a temperature
far below that of boiling water, and it is fair to assume
that the nearer the germ is to its final sensitive condi-
tion the more readily will it succumb to heat. Seeds
soften before and during germination. This premised,
the simple description of the following process will
suffice to make its meaning understood.

An infusion infected with the most powerfully in-
sistent germs, but otherwise protected against the
floating matters of the air, is gradually raised to its
boiling-point. Such germs as have reached the soft
and plastic state immediately preceding their develop-
ment into bacteria are thus destroyed. The infusion is
then put aside in a warm room for ten or twelve hours.
If for twenty-four, we might have the liquid charged
with well-developed bacteria. To anticipate this, at
the end of ten or twelve hours we raise the infusion a
second time to the boiling temperature, which, as
before, destroys all germs then approaching their point
of final development. The infusion is again put aside
for ten or twelve hours, and the process of heating is
repeated. We thus kill the germs in the order of
their resistance , and finally kill the last of them. No
infusion can withstand this process if it be repeated a
sufficient number of times. Artichoke, cucumber, and
turnip infusions, which had proved specially obstinate

324

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

when infected with the germs of desiccated hay, were
completely broken down by this method of discontinuous
heating, three minutes being found sufficient to accom-
plish wdiat three hundred minutes’ continuous boiling
failed to accomplish. I applied the method, moreover,
to infusions of various kinds of hay, including those
most tenacious of life. Not one of them bore the
ordeal. These results were clearly foreseen before they
were realised, so that the germ theory fulfils the test
of every true theory, that test being the power of
prevision.

When ‘ naked or almost naked specks of protoplasm ’
are spoken of, the imagination is drawn upon, not the
objective truth of Nature. Such words sound like the
words of knowledge where knowledge is really nU. The
possibility of a 4 thin covering ’ is conceded by those who
speak in this way. Such a covering may, however,
exercise a powerful protective influence. A thin pellicle
of india-rubber, for example, surrounding a pea keeps
it hard in boiling water for a time sufficient to
reduce an uncovered pea to a pulp. The pellicle pre-
vents imbibition, diffusion, and the consequent dis-
integration. A greasy or oily surface, or even the layer
'of air which clings to certain bodies, would act to some
extent in a similar way. 4 The singular resistance of
green vegetables to sterilisation,’ says Dr. William
Koberts, 4 appears to be due to some peculiarity of the
surface, perhaps their smooth glistening epidermis
which prevented complete wetting of their surfaces.’
I pointed out in 1876 that the process by which an
atmospheric germ is wetted would be an interesting
.subject of investigation. A dry microscope covering-
glass may be caused to float on water for a year. A
sewing-needle may be similarly kept floating, though
its specific gravity is nearly eight times that of water.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

325

Were it not for some specific relation between the
matter of the germ and that of the liquid into which
it falls, wetting would be simply impossible. Antece^
dent to all development there must be an interchange
of matter between the germ and its environment ;
and this interchange must obviously depend upon the
relation of the germ to its encompassing liquid. Any-
thing that hinders this interchange retards the destruc-
tion of the germ in boiling water. In my paper
published in the i Philosophical Transactions ’ for 18 m,
I add the following remark : —

It is not difficult to see that the surface of a seed or germ
may be so affected by desiccation and other causes as practi-
cally to prevent contact between it and the surrounding
liquid. The body of a germ, moreover, may be so indurated
by time and dryness as to resist powerfully the insinuation
of water between its constituent molecules. It would be
difficult to cause such a germ to imbibe the moisture neces-
sary to produce the swelling and softening which precede its
destruction in a liquid of high temperature.

However this may be — whatever be the state of the
surface, or of the body, of the spores of Bacillus subtilis,
they do as a matter of certainty resist, under some
circumstances, exposure for hours to the heat of boiling
water. No theoretic scepticism can successfully stand
in the way of this fact, established as it has been by
hundreds, if not thousands, of rigidly conducted ex-
periments.

We have now to test one of the principal founda-
tions of the doctrine of spontaneous generation as
formulated in this country. With this view, I place
before my friend and co-enquirer two liquids which
have been kept for six months in one of our sealed

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

326

chambers, exposed to optically pure air. The one is a
mineral solution containing in proper proportions all
the substances which enter into the composition of
bacteria, the other is an infusion of turnip — it might be
any one of a hundred other infusions, animal or vegeta-
ble. Both liquids are as clear as distilled water, and
there is no trace of life in either of them. They are,
in fact, completely sterilised. A mutton-chop, over
which a little water has been poured to keep its juices
from drying up, has lain for three days upon a plate in
our warm room. It smells offensively. Placing a drop
of the fetid mutton-juice under a microscope, it is found
swarming with the bacteria of putrefaction. With a
speck of the swarming liquid I inoculate the clear
mineral solution and the clear turnip infusion, as a
surgeon might inoculate an infant with vaccine lymph.
In four-and-twenty hours the transparent liquids have
become turbid throughout, and instead of being barren
as at first they are teeming with life. The experiment
may be repeated a thousand times with the same in-
variable result. To the naked eye the liquids at the
beginning were alike, being both equally transparent —
to the naked eye they are alike at the end, being both
equally muddy. Instead of putrid mutton-juice, we
might take as a source of infection any one of a hun-
dred other putrid liquids, animal or vegetable. So
long as the liquid contains living bacteria a speck of it
commuuicated either to the clear mineral solution, or to
the clear turnip infusion, produces in twenty-four hours
the effect here described.

We now vary the experiment thus : — Opening the
back-door of another closed chamber which has con-
tained for months the pure mineral solution and the
pure turnip infusion side by side, I drop into each ot
them a small pinch of laboratory dust. The effect here

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

327

is tardier than when the speck of putrid liquid was em-
ployed. In three days, however, after its infection with
the dust, the turnip infusion is muddy, and swarming
as before with bacteria. But what about the mineral
solution which, in our first experiment, behaved in a
manner undistinguishable from the turnip-juice? At
the end of three days there is not a bacterium to be
found in it. At the end of three weeks it is equally
innocent of bacterial life. We may repeat the experi-
ment with the solution and the infusion a hundred
times with the same invariable result. Always in the
case of the latter the sowing of the atmospheric dust
yields a crop of bacteria — never in the former does the
dry germinal matter kindle into active life. 1 What
is the inference which the reflecting mind must draw
from this experiment ? Is it not as clear as day that
while both liquids are able to feed the bacteria and to
enable them to increase and multiply, after they have
been once fully developed , only one of the liquids is
able to develope into active bacteria the germinal dust
of the air ?

I invite my friend to reflect upon this conclusion ;
he will, I think, see that there is no escape from it.
He may, if he prefers, hold the opinion, which I con-
sider erroneous, that bacteria exist in the air, not as
germs but as desiccated organisms. The inference
remains, that while the one liquid is able to force the
passage from the inactive to the active state, the other
is not.

But this is not at all the inference which has been
drawn from experiments with the mineral solution.

1 This is the deportment of the mineral solution as described by-
others. My own experiments would lead me to say that the de-
velopment of the bacteria, though exceedingly slow and difficult, is
not impossible.

328

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Seeing its ability to nourish bacteria when once inocu-
lated with the living active organism, and observing
that no bacteria appeared in the solution after long
exposure to the air, the inference was drawn that neither
bacteria nor their germs existed in the air. Through-
out Germany the ablest literature of the subject, even
that opposed to heterogeny, is infected with this error ;
while heterogenists at home and abroad have based upon
it a triumphant demonstration of their doctrine. It is
proved, they say, by the deportment of the mineral
solution that neither bacteria nor their germs exist in
the air ; hence, if, on exposing a thoroughly sterilised
turnip infusion to the air, bacteria appear, they must of
necessity have been spontaneously generated. In the
words of Dr. Bastian : ‘ We can only infer that whilst
the boiled saline solution is quite incapable of engen-
dering bacteria, such organisms are able to arise de novo
in the boiled organic infusion.’ 1

I would ask my eminent colleague what he thinks
of this reasoning now ? The datum is — ‘ A mineral
solution exposed to common air does not develope
bacteria;’ the inference is — ‘Therefore if a turnip
infusion similarly exposed develope bacteria, they must
be spontaneously generated.’ The inference, on the face
of it, is an unwarranted one. But while as matter of
lop'ic it is inconclusive, as matter of fact it is chimerical.
London air is as surely charged with the germs of
bacteria as London chimneys are with smoke. The
inference just referred to is completely disposed of by
the simple question : ‘ Why, when your sterilised
organic infusion is exposed to optically pure air, should'
this generation of life de novo utterly cease? ^Vby
should I be able to preserve my turnip-juice side by
side with your saline solution for the three hundred and

1 ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xxi. p. 130.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

329

sixty-live days of the year, in free connection with the
general atmosphere, on the sole condition that the
portion of that atmosphere in contact with the juice
shall be visibly free from floating dust, while three days’
exposure to that dust fills it with bacteria ? ’ Am I
over sanguine in hoping that as regards the argument
here set forth he who runs may read, and he who reads
may understand ?

We now proceed to the calm and thorough con-
sideration of another subject, more important if pos-
sible than the foregoing one, but like it somewhat
difficult to seize by reason of the very opulence of the
phraseology, logical and rhetorical, in which it has been
set forth. The subject now to be considered relates to
what has been called 4 the death-point of bacteria.’
Those who happen to be acquainted with the modern
English literature of the question will remember howT
challenge after challenge has been issued to pansperm-
atists in general, and to one or two home workers in
particular, to come to close quarters on this cardinal
point. It is obviously the stronghold of the English
heterogen ist. 4 Water,’ he says, 4 is boiling merrily
over a fire when some luckless person upsets the vessel
so that the heated fluid exercises its scathing influence
upon an uncovered portion of the body — hand, arm, or
face. Here, at all events, there is no room for doubt.
Boiling water unquestionably exercises a most per-
nicious and rapidly destructive effect upon the living
matter of which we are composed.’ 1 And lest it should
be supposed that it is the high organisation which,
in this case, renders the body susceptible to heat,
he refers to the action of boiling water on the hen’s
egg to dissipate the notion. ‘The conclusion,’ he
says, 4 would seem to force itself upon us that there is

1 Bastian, ‘ Evolution,’ p. 133.

330

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

something intrinsically deleterious in the action of
boiling water upon living matter — whether this matter
be of high or of low organisation.’ 1 Again, at another
place : ‘ It has been shown that the briefest exposure to
the influence of boiling water is destructive of all living
matter.’ 2

The experiments already recorded plainly show that
there is a marked difference between the dry bacterial
matter of the air, and the wet, soft, and active bacteria
of putrefying organic liquids. The one can be luxu-
riantly bred in the saline solution, the others refuse to
be born there, while both of them are copiously de-
veloped in a sterilised turnip infusion. Inferences, as
we have already seen, founded on the deportment of the
one liquid cannot with the warrant of scientific logic
be extended to the other. But this is exactly what the
heterogenist has done, thus repeating as regards the
death-point of bacteria the error into which he fell
concerning the germs of the air. Let us boil our
muddy mineral solution with its swarming bacteria for
five minutes. In the soft succulent condition in which
they exist in the solution not one of them escapes
destruction. The same is true of the turnip infusion
if it be inoculated with the living bacteria only — the
aerial dust being carefully excluded. In both cases the
dead organisms sink to the bottom of the liquid, and
without re-inoculation no fresh organisms will arise.
But the case is entirely different when we inoculate
our turnip infusion with the desiccated germinal matter
afloat in the air.

The ‘ death-point ’ of bacteria is the maximum
temperature at which they can live, or the minimum
temperature at which they cease to live. If, for ex-
ample, they survive a temperature of 140°, and do not

2 Ibid. p. 46.

1 Bastian, ‘ Evolution,’ p. 135.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

331

survive a temperature of 150°, the death-point lies
somewhere between these two temperatures. Vaccine
lymph, for example, is proved by Messrs. Braidwood
and Vacher to be deprived of its power of infection by
brief exposure to a temperature between 140° and 150°
Fahr. This may be regarded as the death-point of the
lymph, or rather of the particles diffused in the lymph,
which constitute the real contagium. If no time, how-
ever, be named for the application of the heat, the term
‘ death-point ’ is a vague one. An infusion, for ex-
ample, which will resist five hours’ continuous exposure
to the boiling temperature, will succumb to five days’
exposure to a temperature 50° Fahr. below that of
boiling. The fully developed soft bacteria of putrefying
liquids are not only killed by five minutes’ boiling, but
by less than a single minute’s boiling — indeed, they are
slain at about the same temperature as the vaccine.
The same is true of the plastic, active bacteria of the
turnip infusion.1

But, instead of choosing. a putrefying liquid for
inoculation, let us prepare and employ our inoculating
substance in the following simple way : — Let a small
wisp of hay, desiccated by age, be washed in a glass of
water, and let a perfectly sterilised turnip infusion be
inoculated with the washing liquid. After three hours’
continuous boiling the infusion thus infected will often
develope luxuriant bacterial life. Precisely the same
occurs if a turnip infusion be prepared in an atmosphere
well charged with desiccated hay-germs. The infusion

1 In my paper in the ‘ Philosophical Transactions ’ for 1876, I
pointed out and illustrated experimentally the difference, as regards
rapidity of development, between water-germs and air-germs ; the
growth from the already softened water-germs proving to be
practically as rapid as from developed bacteria. This preparedness
of the germ for rapid development is associated with its prepared-
ness for rapid destruction.

332

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

in this case infects itself without special inoculation,
and its subsequent resistance to sterilisation is often
very great. On the 1st of March last I purposely in-
fected the air of our laboratory with the germinal dust
ot a sapless kind of hay mown in 1875. Ten groups of
flasks were charged with turnip infusion prepared in
the infected laboratory, and were afterwards subjected
to the boiling temperature for periods varying from
15 minutes to 240 minutes. Out of the ten groups
only one was sterilised — that, namely, which had been
boiled for four hours. Every flask of the nine groups
which had been boiled for 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105,
120, and 180 minutes respectively, bred organisms
afterwards. The same is true of other vegetable in-
fusions. On the 28th of February last, for example, I
boiled six flasks, containing cucumber infusion prepared
in an infected atmosphere, for periods of 15, 30, 45, 60,
120, and 180 minutes. Every flask of the group sub-
sequently developed organisms. On the same day, in
the case of three flasks, the boiling was prolonged to
240, 300, and 360 minutes ; and these three flasks were
completely sterilised. Animal infusions, which under
ordinary circumstances are rendered infallibly barren
by five minutes’ boiling, behave like the vegetable in-
fusions in an atmosphere infected with hay-germs. On
the 30th of March, for example, five flasks were charged
with a clear infusion of beef and boiled for 60 minutes,
120 minutes, 180 minutes, 240 minutes, and 300
minutes respectively. Every one of them became sub-
sequently crowded with organisms, and the same hap-
pened to a perfectly pellucid mutton infusion prepared
at the same time. The cases are to be numbered by
hundreds in which similar powers of resistance were
manifested by infusions of the most diverse kinds.

In the presence of such facts I would ask my

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

333

colleague whether it is necessary to dwell for a single
instant on the one-sidedness of the evidence which led
to the conclusion that all living matter has its life
destroyed by ‘ the briefest exposure to the influence of
boiling water.’ An infusion proved to be barren by six
months' exposure to moteless air maintained at a tem-
perature of 90° Fahr., when inoculated with full-grown
active bacteria, fills itself in two days with organisms
so sensitive as to be killed by a few minutes’ exposure
to a temperature much below that of boiling water.
But the extension of this result to the desiccated ger-
minal matter of the air is without warrant or justifica-
tion. This is obvious without going beyond the
argument itself. But we have gone far beyond the
argument, and proved by multiplied experiment the
alleged destruction of all living matter by the briefest
exposure to the influence of boiling water to be a de-
fusion. The whole logical edifice raised upon this
basis falls therefore to the ground ; and the argument
that bacteria and their germs, being destroyed at 140°,
must, if they appear after exposure to 212°, be sponta-
neously generated, is, I trust, silenced for ever.

Through the precautions, variations, and repetitions
observed and executed with the view of rendering its
results secure, the separate vessels employed in this
enquiry have mounted up in two years to nearly ten
thousand.

Besides the philosophic interest attaching to the
problem of life’s origin, which will be always immense,
there are the practical interests involved in the appli-
cation of the doctrines here discussed to surgery and
medicine. The antiseptic system, at which I have
already glanced, illustrates the manner in which bene-
ficent results of the gravest moment follow in the
wake of clear theoretic insight. Surgery was once a

334

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

noble art ; it is now, as well, a noble science. Prior
to the introduction of the antiseptic system, the thought-
ful surgeon could not have failed to learn empirically
that there was something in the air which often de-
feated the most consummate operative skill. That
something the antiseptic treatment destroys or renders
innocuous. At King’s College Mr. Lister operates and
dresses while a fine shower of mixed carbolic acid and
water, produced in the simplest manner, falls upon the
wound, the lint and gauze employed in the subsequent
dressing being duly saturated with the antiseptic. At
St. Bartholomew’s Mr. Callender employs the dilute
carbolic acid without the spray ; but, as regards the
real point aimed at — the preventing of the woimd from
becoming a nidus for the propagation of septic bacteria —
the practice in both hospitals is the same. Commend-
ing itself as it does to the scientifically trained mind,
the antiseptic system has struck deep root in Germany.

Had space allowed, it would have given me pleasure
to point out the present position of the ‘ germ theory ’
in reference to the phenomena of infectious disease,
distinguishing arguments based on analogy — which,
however, are terribly strong — from those based on
actual observation. I should have liked to follow up
the account I have already given 1 of the truly excel-
lent researches of a young and an unknown German
physician named Koch, on splenic fever, by an account
of what Pasteur has recently done with reference to the
same subject. Here we have before us a living con-
tagium of the most deadly power, which we can follow
from the beginning to the end of its life cycle.2 We

1 ‘ Fortnightly Review,’ November 1S76, see article ‘ Fermenta-
tion.’

2 Dallinger and Drysdale had previously shown what skill and
patience can accomplish, by their admirable observations on the
life history of the monads.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

335

find it in the blood or spleen of a smitten animal in
the state say of short motionless rods. When these
rods are placed in a nutritive liquid on the warm stage
of the microscope, we soon see them lengthening1 into
filaments which lie, in some cases, side by side, forming
in others graceful loops, or becoming coiled into knots
of a complexity not to be unravelled. We finally see
those filaments resolving themselves into innumerable
spores, each with death potentially housed within it,
yet not to be distinguished microscopically from the
harmless germs of Bacillus subtilis. The bacterium
of splenic fever is called Bacillus Anthracis. This
formidable organism was shown to me by M. Pasteur
in Paris last July. His recent investigations regarding
the part it plays pathologically certainly rank amongst
the most remarkable labours of that remarkable man.
Observer after observer had strayed and fallen in this
land of pitfalls, a multitude of opposing conclusions
and mutually destructive theories beiug the result. In
association with a younger physiological colleague,
M. Joubert, Pasteur struck in amidst the chaos, and
soon reduced it to harmony. They proved, among other
things, that in cases where previous observers in France
had supposed themselves to be dealing solely with
splenic fever, another equally virulent factor was simul-
taneously active. Splenic fever was often overmastered
by septicaemia, and results due solely to the latter had
been frequently made the ground of pathological in-
ferences regarding the character and cause of the
former. Combining duly the two factors, all the
previous irregularities disappeared, every result obtained
receiving the fullest explanation. On studying the
account of this masterly investigation, the words where-
with Pasteur himself feelingly alludes to the difficulties
and dangers of the experimenter’s art came home to

336

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

me with especial force : 4 J’ai tant de fois eprouve que
dans cet art difficile de Pexperimentation les plus
habiles bronchent a cbaqne pas, et que l’interpretation
des faits n’est pas moins perilleuse.’ 1

1 ‘ Comptes-Rendus,’ lxxxiii. p. 177.

337

XIV.

SCIENCE AND MAN.1

MAG-NET attracts iron ; but when we analyse the

effect we learn that the metal is not only
attracted but repelled, the final approach to the magnet
being due to the difference of two unequal and opposing
forces. Social progress is for the most part typified by
this duplex or polar action. As a general rule, every
advance is balanced by a partial retreat, every amelio-
ration is associated more or less with deterioration.
No great mechanical improvement, for example, is in-
troduced for the benefit of society at large that does
not bear hardly upon individuals. Science, like other
things, is subject to the operation of this polar law,
what is good for it under one aspect being bad for it
under another.

Science demands above all thing's personal concen-
tration. Its home is the study of the mathematician,
the quiet laboratory of the experimenter, and the cabi-
net of the meditative observer of nature. Different
atmospheres are required by the man of science^as such,
and the man of action. Thus the facilities of social and
international intercourse, the railway, the telegraph,
and the post-office, which are such undoubted boons to
the man of action, react to some extent injuriously on
the man of science. Their tendency is to break up

1 Presidential Address, delivered) before the Birmingham and
Midland Institute, October 1, 1877 ; with additions.

VOL. II. Z

338

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

that conoent.rativeness which, as I have said, is an abso-
lute necessity to the scientific investigator.

The men who have most profoundly influenced the
world from the scientific side have habitually sought
isolation. Faraday, at a certain period of his career,
formally renounced dining out. Darwin lives apart
from the bustle of the world in his quiet home in Kent.
Mayer and Joule dealt in unobtrusive retirement with
the weightiest scientific questions. There is, however,
one motive power in the world which no man, be he a
scientific student or otherwise, can afford to treat with
indifference ; and that is, the cultivation of right rela-
tions with his fellow-men — the performance of his duty,
not as an isolated individual, but as a member of society.
It is duty in this aspect, overcoming alike the sense of
possible danger and the desire for repose, that has placed
me in your presence here to-night.

To look at his picture as a whole, a painter re-
quires distance ; and to judge of the total scientific
achievement of any age, the standpoint of a succeeding
age is desirable. We may, however, transport ourselves
in idea into the future, and thus survey with more or
less completeness the science of our time. We some-
times hear it decried, and contrasted to its disadvantage
with the science of other times. I do not think that
this will be the verdict of posterity. I think, on the
contrary, that posterity will acknowledge that in the
history of science no higher samples of intellectual con-
quest are recorded than those which this age has made
its own. One of the most salient of these I propose, with
your permission, to make the subject of our consider-
ation during the coming hour.

It is now generally admitted that the man of to-day
is the child and product of incalculable antecedent time.
His physical and intellectual textures have been woven

SCIENCE AND MAN,

339

for him during his passage through phases of history
and forms of existence which lead the mind back to an
abysmal past. One of the qualities which he has de-
rived from that past is the yearning to let in the light
of principles on the otherwise bewildering flux of phe-
nomena. He has been described by the German Lich-
tenberg as ‘das rastlose Ursachenthier ’ — the restless
cause-seeking animal — in whom facts excite a kind of
hunger to know the sources from which they spring.
Never, I venture to say, in the history of the world has
this longing been more liberally responded to, both
among men of science and the general public, than
during the last thirty or forty years. I say ‘ the general
public,’ because it is a feature of our time that the man
of science no longer limits his labours to the society of
his colleagues and his peers, but shares, as far as it is
possible to share, with the world at large the fruits of
enquiry.

The celebrated Robert Boyle regarded the universe
as a machine ; Mr. Carlyle prefers regarding it as a tree.
He loves the image of the umbrageous Igdrasil better
than that of the Strasburg clock. A machine may be
defined as an organism with life and direction outside ;
a tree may be defined as an organism with life and
direction within. In the light of these definitions, I
close with the conception of Carlyle. The order and
energy of the universe I hold to be inherent, and not
imposed from without, the expression of fixed law and
not of arbitrary will, exercised by what Carlyle would call
an Almighty Clockmaker. But the two conceptions
are not so much opposed to each other after all. In
one fundamental particular they at all events agree.
They equally imply the interdependence and harmonious
interaction of parts, and the subordination of the indi-

340

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

vidual powers of the universal organism to the working
of the whole.

Never were the harmony and interdependence just
referred to so clearly recognised as now. Our insight
regarding them is not that vague and general insight
to which our fathers had attained, and which, in early
times, was more frequently affirmed by the synthetic
poet than by the scientific man. The interdependence
of our day has become quantitative — expressible by
numbers — leading, it must be added, directly into that
inexorable reign of law which so many gentle people
regard with dread. In the domain now under review
men of science had first to work their way from dark-
ness into twilight, and from twilight into day. There
is no solution of continuity in science. It is not given
to any man, however endowed, to rise spontaneously into
intellectual splendour without the parentage of ante-
cedent thought. Great discoveries grow. Here, as in
other cases, we have first the seed, then the ear, then
the full corn in the ear, the last member of the series
implying the first. Thus, as regards the discovery of
gravitation with which the name of Newton is iden-
tified, notions more or less clear concerning it had
entered many minds before Newton’s transcendent
mathematical genius raised it to the level of a demon-
stration. The whole of his deductions, moreover, rested
upon the inductions of Kepler. Newton shot beyond
his predecessors ; but his thoughts were rooted in their
thoughts, and a just distribution of merit would assign
to them a fair portion of the honour of discovery.

Scientific theories sometimes float like rumours in
the air before they receive complete expression. The
doom of a doctrine is often practically sealed, and the
truth of one is often practically accepted, long prior to
the demonstration of either the error or the truth.

SCIENCE AND MAN.

341

Perpetual motion was discarded before it was proved to
be opposed to natural law ; and, as regards the connec-
tion and interaction of natural forces, intimations of
modern discoveries are strewn through the writings of
Leibnitz, Boyle, Hooke, Locke and others.

Confining ourselves to recent times, Dr. Ingleby has
pointed out to me some singularly sagacious remarks
bearing upon this question, which were published by
an anonymous writer in 1820. Roget’s penetration
was conspicuous in 1829. Mohr had grasped in 1837
some deep-lying truth. The writings of Faraday
furnish frequent illustrations of his profound belief in
the unity of nature. ‘I have long,’ he writes in 1845,

‘ held an opinion almost amounting to conviction, in
common, I believe, with other lovers of natural know-
ledge, that the various forms under which the forces of
matter are made manifest have one common origin, or,
in other words, are so directly related and mutually
dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one
into another, and possess equivalence of power in their
action.’ His own researches on magneto-electricity, on
electro-chemistry, and on the 6 magnetisation of light ’
led him directly to this belief. At an early date Mr.
Justice Grove made his mark upon this question. Cold-
ing, though starting from a metaphysical basis, grasped
eventually the relation between heat and mechanical
work, and sought to determine it experimentally. And
here let me say, that to him who has only the truth at
heart, and who in his dealings with scientific history
keeps his soul unwarped by envy, hatred, or malice,
personal or national, every fresh accession to historic
knowledge must be welcome. For every new-comer of
proved merit, more especially if that merit should have
been previously overlooked, he makes ready room in his
recognition or his reverence. But no retrospect of

342

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

scientific literature has as yet brought to light a claim
which can sensibly affect the positions accorded to two
great Path-hewers , as the Germans call them, whose
names in relation to this subject are linked in indis-
soluble association. These names are Julius Robert
Mayer and James Prescott Joule.

In his essay on 4 Circles ’ Mr. Emerson, if I re-
member rightly, pictured intellectual progress as
rhythmic. At a given moment knowledge is surrounded
by a barrier which marks its limit. It gradually
gathers clearness and strength until by-and-by some
thinker of exceptional power bursts the barrier and wins
a wider circle, within which thought once more en-
trenches itself. But the internal force again accumu-
lates, the new barrier is in its turn broken, and the
mind finds itself surrounded by a still wider horizon.
Thus, according to Emerson, knowledge spreads by
intermittent victories instead of progressing at a uni-
form rate.

When Dr. Joule first proved that a weight of one
pound, falling through a height of seven hundred and
seventy-two feet, generated an amount of heat compe-
tent to warm a pound of water one degree Fahrenheit,
and that in lifting the weight so much heat exactly
disappeared, he broke an Emersonian 4 circle,’ releasing
by the act an amount of scientific energy which rapidly
overran a vast domain, and embodied itself in the great
doctrine known as the 4 Consei’vation of Energy.’ This
doctrine recognises in the material universe a constant
sum of power made up of items among which the most
Protean fluctuations are incessantly going on. It is as
if the body of Nature were alive, the thrill and inter-
change of its energies resembling those of an organism.
The parts of the 4 stupendous whole ’ shift and change,
augment and diminish, appear and disappear, while the

SCIENCE AND MAN.

343

total of which they are the parts remains quantitatively
immutable. Immutable, because when change occurs
it is always polar — plus accompanies minus, gain ac-
companies loss, no item varying in the slightest degree
without an absolutely equal change of some other item
in the opposite direction.

The sun warms the tropical ocean, converting a
portion of its liquid into vapour, which rises in the air
and is recondensed on mountain heights, returning in
rivers to the ocean from which it came. Up to the
point where condensation begins, an amount of heat
exactly equivalent to the molecular work of vaporisa-
tion and the mechanical work of lifting the vapour to
the mountain-tops has disappeared from the universe.
What is the gain corresponding to this loss ? It will
seem when mentioned to be expressed in a foreign cur-
rency. The loss is a loss of heat ; the gain is a gain of
distance, both as regards masses and molecules. Water
which was formerly at the sea-level has been lifted
to a position from which it can fall ; molecules which
have been locked together as a liquid are now separate
as vapour which can recondense. After condensation
gravity comes into effectual play, pulling the showers
down upon the hills, and the rivers thus created through
their gorges to the sea. Every raindrop which smites
the mountain produces its definite amount of heat ;
every river in its course develops heat by the clash of
its cataracts and the friction of its bed. In the act of
condensation, moreover, the molecular work of vapori-
sation is accurately reversed. Compare, then, the
primitive loss of solar warmth with the heat generated
by the condensation of the vapour, and by the subse-
quent fall of the water from cloud to sea. They are
mathematically equal to each other. No particle of

344

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

vapour was formed and lifted without being paid for in
the currency of solar heat ; no particle returns as water
to the sea without the exact quantitative restitution of
that heat. There is nothing gratuitous in physical
nature, no expenditure without equivalent gain, no gain
without equivalent expenditure. With inexorable con-
stancy the one accompanies the other, leaving no nook
or crevice between them for spontaneity to mingle with
the pure and necessary play of natural force. Has this
uniformity of nature ever been broken ? The reply is :
‘Not to the knowledge of science.’

What has been here stated regarding heat and
gravity applies to the whole of inorganic nature. Let
us take an illustration from chemistry. The metal
zinc may be burnt in oxygen, a perfectly definite
amount of heat being produced by the combustion of
a given weight of the metal. But zinc may also be
burnt in a liquid which contains a supply of oxygen —
in water, for example. It does not in this case produce
flame or fire, but it does produce heat which is capable
of accurate measurement. But the heat of zinc burnt
in water falls short of that produced in pure oxygen,
the reason being that to obtain its oxygen from the
water the zinc must first dislodge the hydrogen. It is
in the performance of this molecular work that the
missing heat is absorbed. Mix the liberated hydrogen
with oxygen and cause them to recombine ; the heat
developed is mathematically equal to the missing heat.
Thus in pulling the oxygen and hydrogen asunder an
amount of heat is consumed which is accurately restored
by their reunion.

This leads up to a few remarks upon the Voltaic
battery. It is not my design to dwell upon the technical
features of this wonderful instrument, but simply, by
means of it, to show what varying shapes a given

SCIENCE AND MAN.

345

amount of energy can assume while maintaining' un-
varying quantitative stability. When that form of
power which we call an electric current passes through
Grove’s battery, zinc is consumed in acidulated water ;
and in the battery we are able so to arrange matters
that when no current passes no zinc shall be consumed.
Now the current, whatever it may be, possesses the
power of generating heat outside the battery. We can
fuse with it iridium, the most refractory of metals, or
we can produce with it the dazzling electric light, and
that at any terrestrial distance from the battery itself.

We will now, however, content om'selves with caus-
ing the current to raise a given length of platinum wire,
first to a blood-heat, then to redness, and finally to a
white heat. The heat under these circumstances gene-
rated in the battery by the combustion of a fixed
quantity of zinc is no longer constant, but it varies in-
versely as the heat generated outside. If the outside heat
be nil , the inside heat is a maximum ; if the external
wire be raised to a blood-heat, the internal heat falls
slightly short of the maximum. If the wire be rendered
red-hot, the quantity of missing heat within the battery
is greater, and if the external wire be rendered white-hot,
the defect is greater still. Add together the internal
and external heat produced by the combustion of a
given weight of zinc, and you have an absolutely con-
stant total. The heat generated without is so much
lost within, the heat generated within is so much lost
without, the polar changes already adverted to coming
here conspicuously into play. Thus in a variety of
ways we can distribute the items of a never-varying sum,
but even the subtle agency of the electric current places
no creative power in our hands.

Instead of generating external heat, we may cause
the current to effect chemical decomposition at a dis-

34 G

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

tance from the battery. Let it, for example, decompose
water into oxygen and hydrogen. The heat generated
in the battery under these circumstances by the com-
bustion of a given weight of zinc falls short of what is
produced when there is no decomposition. How far
short ? The question admits of a perfectly exact answer.
When the oxygen and hydrogen recombine, the heat
absorbed in the decomposition is accurately restored,
and it is exactly equal in amount to that missing in
the battery. We may, if we like, bottle up the gases,
carry in this form the heat of the battery to the polar
regions, and liberate it there. The battery, in fact, is
a hearth on which fuel is consumed ; but the heat of
the combustion, instead of being confined in the usual
manner to the hearth itself, may be first liberated at
the other side of the world.

And here we are able to solve an enigma which long
perplexed scientific men, and which could not be solved
until the bearing of the mechanical theory of heat upon
the phenomena of the Voltaic battery was understood.
The puzzle was, that a single cell could not decompose
water. The reason is now plain enough. The solution
of an equivalent of zinc in a single cell develops not
much more than half the amount of heat required to
decompose an equivalent of water, and the single cell
cannot cede an amount of force which it does not pos-
sess. But by forming a battery of two cells instead of
one, we develop an amount of heat slightly in excess
of that needed for the decomposition of the water. The
two-celled battery is therefore rich enough to pay for
that decomposition, and to maintain the excess referred
to within its own cells.

Similar reflections apply to the thermo-electric pile,
an instrument usually composed of small bars of bis-
muth and antimony soldered alternately together. The

SCIENCE AND MAN.

347

electric current is here evoked by warming the soldered
junctions of one face of the pile. Like the Voltaic
current, the thermo-electric current can heat wires,
produce decomposition, magnetise iron, and deflect a
magnetic needle at any distance from its origin, Tou
will be disposed, and rightly disposed, to refer those
distant manifestations of power to the heat communi-
cated to the face of the pile, but the case is worthy ot
closer examination. In 1826 Thomas Seebeck dis-
covered thermo-electricity, and six yea,rs subsequently
Peltier made an observation which comes with singular
felicity to our aid in determining the material used up
in the formation of the thermo-electric current. He
found that when a weak extraneous current was sent
from antimony to bismuth the junction of the two
metals was always heated, but that when the direction
was from bismuth to antimony the junction was chilled.
Now the current in the thermo-pile itself is always from
bismuth to antimony, across the heated junction — a
direction in which it cannot possibly establish itself
without consuming the heat imparted to the junction.
This heat is the nutriment of the current. Thus the
heat generated by the thermo -current in a distant wire
is simply that originally imparted to the pile, which has
been first transmuted into electricity, and then retrans-
muted in co its first form at a distance from its origin.
As water in a state of vapour passes from a boiler to a
distant condenser, and there assumes its primitive form
without gain or loss, so the heat communicated to the
thermo-pile distils into the subtler electric current,
which is, as it were, recondensed into heat in the dis-
tant platinum wire.

In my youth I thought an electro-magnetic engine

which was shown to me a veritable perpetual motion

a machine, that is to say, which performed work with-

348

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

out the expenditure of power. Let us consider the
action of such a machine. Suppose it to he employed
to pump water from a lower to a higher level. On
examining the battery which works the engine we find
that the zinc consumed does not yield its full amount
of heat. The quantity of heat thus missing within is
the exact thermal equivalent of the mechanical work
performed without. Let the water fall again to the
lower level ; it is warmed by the fall. Add the heat
thus produced to that generated by the friction, me-
chanical and magnetical, of the engine ; we thus obtain
the precise amount of heat missing in the battery. All
the effects obtained from the machine are thus strictly
paid for ; this 1 payment for results ’ being, I would
repeat, the inexorable method of nature.

No engine, however subtly devised, can evade this
law of equivalence, or perform on its own account the
smallest modicum of work. The machine distributes,
but it cannot create. Is the animal body, then, to be
classed among machines ? When I lift a weight, or
throw a stone, or climb a mountain, or wrestle with
my comrade, am I not conscious of actually creating
and expending force ? Let us look at the antecedents
of this force. We derive the muscle and fat of our
bodies from what we eat. Animal heat you know to be
due to the slow combustion of this fuel. My arm is
now inactive, and the ordinary slow combustion of my
blood and tissue is going on. For every grain of fuel
thus burnt a perfectly definite amount of heat has been
produced. I now contract my biceps muscle without
causing it to perform external work. I he combustion
is quickened, and the heat is increased ; this additional
heat being liberated in the muscle itself. I lay hold
of a 56 lb. weight, and by the contraction of my biceps
lift it through the vertical space of a foot. The blood

SCIENCE AND MAN.

349

and tissue consumed during this contraction have not
developed in the muscle their due amount of heat. A
quantity of heat is at this moment missing- in my muscle
which would raise the temperature of an ounce of water
somewhat more than one degree Fahrenheit. I liberate
the weight : it falls to the earth, and by its collision
generates the precise amount of heat missing in the
muscle. My muscular heat is thus transferred from its
local hearth to external space. The fuel is consumed
in my body, but the heat of combustion is produced
outside my body. The case is substantially the same
as that of the Voltaic battery when it performs external
work, or produces external heat. All this points to the
conclusion that the force we employ in muscular exer-
tion is the force of burning fuel and not of creative
will. In the light of these facts the body is seen to be
as incapable of generating energy without expenditure,
as the solids and liquids of the Voltaic battery. The
body, in other words, falls into the catagory of
machines.

We can do with the body all that we have already
done with the battery — heat platinum wires, decompose
water, magnetise iron, and deflect a magnetic needle.
The combustion of muscle may be made to produce all
these effects, as the combustion of zinc may be caused
to produce them. By turning the handle of a magneto-
electric machine a coil of wire may be caused to rotate
between the poles of a magnet. As long as the two
ends of the coil are unconnected we have simply to
overcome the ordinary inertia and friction of the
machine in turning the handle. But the moment the
two ends of the coil are united by a thin platinum wire
a sudden addition of labour is thrown upon the turnincr
arm. When the necessary labour is expended, its
equivalent immediately appears. Th platinum wire

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

zr> o

glows. You can readily maintain it at a white fieat, or
even fuse it. This is a very remarkable result. From
the muscles of the arm, with a temperature of 100°, we
extract the temperature of molten platinum, which is
nearly four thousand degrees. The miracle here is the
reverse of that of the burning bush mentioned in
Exodus. There the bush burned, but was not consumed :
here the body is consumed, but does not burn. The
similarity of the action with that of the Voltaic battery
when it heats an external wire is too obvious to need
pointing out. When the machine is used to decompose
water, the heat of the muscle, like that of the battery,
is consumed in molecular work, being fully restored
when the gases recombine. As before, also, the trans-
muted heat of the muscles may be bottled up, carried
to the polar regions, and there restored to its pristine
form.

The matter of the human body is the same as that
of the world around us ; and here we find the forces of
the human body identical with those of inorganic
nature. Just as little as the Voltaic battery is the
animal body a creator of force. It is an apparatus
exquisite and effectual beyond all others in transforming
and distributing the energy with which it is supplied,
but it possesses no creative power. Compared with the
notions previously entertained regarding the play of
‘ vital force ’ this is a great result. The problem of
vital dynamics has been described by a competent
authority as ‘ the grandest of all.’ I subscribe to this
opinion, and honour correspondingly the man who first
successfully grappled with the problem. He was no
pope, in the sense of being infallible, but he was a man
of genius whose work will be held in honour as long as
science endures I have already named him in connec-

SCIENCE AND MAN.

351

tion with our illustrious countryman Dr. Joule. Other
eminent men took up this subject subsequently and
independently, but all that has been done hitherto
enhances instead of diminishing the merits of Dr.
Mayer.

Consider the vigour of his reasoning. ‘ Beyond the
power of generating internal heat, the animal organism
can generate heat external to itself. A blacksmith by
hammering can warm a nail, and a savage by friction
can heat wood to its point of ignition. Unless, then,
we abandon the physiological axiom that the animal
body cannot create heat out of nothing, we are driven
to the conclusion that it is the total heat , within and
without , that ought to be regarded as the real calorific
effect of the oxidation within the body.’’ Mayer, how-
ever, not only states the principle, but illustrates
numerically the transfer of muscular heat to external
space. A bowler who imparts a velocity of 30 feet to
an 8-lb. ball consumes in the act ^ of a grain of carbon.
The heat of the muscle is here distributed over the
track of the ball, being developed there by mechanical
friction. A man weighing 150 lbs. consumes in lifting
his own body to a height of 8 feet the heat of a grain
of carbon. Jumping from this height the heat is
restored. The consumption of 2 oz. 4 drs. 20 grs. of
carbon would place the same man on the summit of a
( mountain 10,000 feet high. In descending the moun-
tain an amount of heat equal to that produced by the
combustion of the foregoing amount of carbon is re-
stoied. The muscles of a labourer whose weight is
150 lbs. weigh 64 lbs. When dried they are reduced
to 15 lbs. Were the oxidation corresponding to a day-
labourer’s ordinary work exerted on the muscles alone
they would be wholly consumed in 80 days. Were the
) oxidation necessary to sustain the heart’s action concen-

352

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

trated on the heart itself, it would he consumed in
8 days. And if we confine our attention to the two
ventricles, their action would consume the associated
muscular tissue in days. With a fulness and preci-
sion of which this is but a sample did Mayer, between
1842 and 1845, deal with the great question of vital
dynamics.

In direct opposition, moreover, to the foremost
scientific authorities of that day, with Liebig at their
head, this solitary Heilbronn worker was led by his
calculations to maintain that the muscles, in the main,
played the part of machinery, converting the fat, which
had been previously considered a mere heat-producer,
into the motive power of the organism. Mayer’s pre-
vision has been justified by events, for the scientific
world is now upon his side.

We place, then, food in our stomachs as so much
combustible matter. It is first dissolved by purely
chemical processes, and the nutritive fluid is poured
into the blood. Here it comes into contact with
atmospheric oxygen admitted by the lungs. It unites
with the oxygen as wood or coal might unite with it in
a furnace. The matter-products of the union, if I may
use the term, are the same in both cases, viz. carbonic
acid and water. The force-products are also the same —
heat within the body, or heat and work outside the
body. Thus far every action of the organism belongs
to the domain either of physics or of chemistry. But
you saw me contract the muscle of my aim. What
enabled me to do so ? Was it or was it not the direct
action of my will ? The answer is, the action of the
will is mediate, not direct. Over and above the muscles
the human organism is provided with long whitish
filaments of medullary matter, which issue from the
spinal column, being connected by it on the one side

SCIENCE AND MAN.

353

with the brain, and on the other side losing themselves
in the muscles. Those filaments or cords are the
nerves, which you know are divided into two kinds,
sensor and motor, or, if you like the terms better,
afferent and efferent nerves. The former carry impres-
sions from the external world to the brain ; the latter
convey the behests of the brain to the muscles. Here,
as elsewhere, we find ourselves aided by the sagacity of
Mayer, who was the first clearly to formulate the part
played by the nerves in the organism. Mayer saw that
neither nerves nor brain, nor both together, possessed
the energy necessary to animal motion ; but he also
saw that the nerve could lift a latch and open a door,
by which floods of energy are let loose. ‘ As an engi-
neer,’ he says with admirable lucidity, 6 by the motion
of his finger in opening a valve or loosening a detent
can liberate an amount of mechanical energy almost
infinite compared with its exciting cause ; so the
nerves, acting on the muscles, can unlock an amount of
power out of all proportion to the work done by the
nerves themselves.’ The nerves, according to Mayer,
pull the trigger, but the gunpowder which they ignite
is stored in the muscles. This is the view now univer
sally entertained.

The quickness of thought has passed into a proverb,
and the notion that any measurable time elapsed be
tween the infliction of a wound and the feeling of the
injury would have been rejected as preposterous thirty
years ago. Nervous impressions, notwithstanding the
results of Haller, were thought to be transmitted, if not
instantaneously, at all events with the rapidity of elec-
tricity. Hence, when Helmholtz, in 1851, affirmed, as
the result of experiment, nervous transmission to be a
comparatively sluggish process, very few believed him.
His experiments may now be made in the lecture-room.

VOL. II.

A A

354

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Sound in air moves at the rate of 1,100 feet a second ;
sound in water moves at the rate of 5,000 feet a second ;
light in aether moves at the rate of 186,000 miles a
second, and electricity in free wires moves probably at
the same rate. But the nerves transmit their messages
at the rate of only 70 feet a second, a progress which in
these quick times might well be regarded as inordinately
slow.

Your townsman, Mr. Gore, has produced by electro-
lysis a kind of antimony which exhibits an action
strikingly analogous to that of nervous propagation.
A rod of this antimony is in such a molecular condition
that when you scratch or heat one end of the rod, the
disturbance propagates itself before your eyes to the
other end, the onward march of the disturbance being
announced by the development of heat and fumes along
the line of propagation. In some such way the mole-
cules of the nerves are successively overthrown ; and if
Mr. Gore could only devise some means of winding up
his exhausted antimony, as the nutritive blood winds
up exhausted nerves, the comparison would be com-
plete. The subject may be summed up, as Du Bois-
Beymond has summed it up, by reference to the case
of a whale struck by a harpoon in the tail. If the
animal were 70 feet long, a second would elapse before
the disturbance could reach the brain. But the impres-
sion after its arrival has to diffuse itself and throw the
brain into the molecular condition necessary to con-
sciousness. Then, and not till then, the command to
the tail to defend itself is shot through the motor
nerves. Another second must elapse before the com-
mand can reach the tail, so that more than two seconds
transpire between the infliction of the wound and the
muscular response of the part wounded. The interval
required for the kindling of consciousness would pro-

SCIENCE AND MAN.

355

bably more than suffice for the destruction of the brain
by lightning, or even by a rifle-bullet. Before the
organ can arrange itself it may, therefore, be destroyed,
and in such a case we may safely conclude that death
is painless.

The experiences of common life supply us with
copious instances of the liberation of vast stores of
muscular power by an infinitesimal 4 priming ’ of the
muscles by the nerves. We all know the effect pro-
duced on a ‘ nervous ’ organisation by a slight sound
which causes affright. An aerial wave, the energy of
which would not reach a minute fraction of that neces-
sary to raise the thousandth of a grain through the
thousandth of an inch, can throw the whole human
frame into a powerful mechanical spasm, followed by
violent respiration and palpitation. The eye. of course,
may be appealed to as well as the ear. Of this the
lamented Lange gives the following vivid illustration :

A merchant sits complacently in his easy chair, not
knowing whether smoking, sleeping, newspaper reading,
or the digestion of food occupies the largest portion of
his personality. A servant enters the room with a tele-
gram bearing the words, £ Antwerp, &c. . . . Jonas and
Co. have failed.’ 4 Tell James to harness the horses ! ’
The servant flies. Up starts the merchant, wide awake ;
makes a dozen paces through the room, descends to
the counting-house, dictates letters, and forwards des-
patches. He jumps into his carriage, the horses snort,
and their driver is immediately at the Bank, on the
Bourse, and among his commercial friends. Before an
hour has elapsed he is again at home, where he throws
himself once more into his easy chair with a deep-drawn
sigh, ‘ Thank God I am protected against the worst,
and now for further reflection.’

A A 2

356

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

This complex mass of action, emotional, intellectual,
and mechanical, is evoked by the impact upon the retina
of the infinitesimal waves of light coming from a few
pencil marks on a hit of paper. We have, as Lange
says, terror, hope, sensation, calculation, possible ruin,
and victory compressed into a moment. What caused
the merchant to spring out of his chair ? The contrac-
tion of his muscles. What made his muscles contract ?
An impulse of the nerves, which lifted the proper latch,
and liberated the muscular power. Whence this im-
pulse ? From the centre of the nervous system. But
how did it originate there ? This is the critical ques-
tion, to which some will reply that it had its origin in
the human soul.

The aim and effort of science is to explain the un-
known in terms of the known. Explanation, therefore,
is conditioned by knowledge. You have probably heard
the story of the German peasant, who, in early railway
days, was taken to see the performance of a locomotive.
He had never known carriages to be moved except by
animal power. Every explanation outside of this con-
ception lay beyond his experience, and could not be
invoked. After long reflection therefore, and seeing
no possible escape from the conclusion, he exclaimed
confidently to his companion, * Es miissen doch Pferde
darin sein ’ — There must be horses inside. Amusing as
this locomotive theory may seem, it illustrates a deep-
lying truth.

With reference to our present question, some may
be disposed to press upon me such considerations as
these : — Your motor nerves are so many speaking-tubes,
through which messages are sent from the man to the
world ; and your sensor nerves are so many conduits
through which the whispers of the world are sent back
to the man. But you have not told us where is the

SCIENCE AND MAN.

357

man. Who or what is it that sends and receives those
messages through the bodily organism ? Do not the
phenomena point to the existence of a self within the
self, which acts through the body as through a skilfully
constructed instrument ? You picture the muscles as
hearkening to the commands sent through the motor
nerves, and you picture the sensor nerves as the vehicles
of incoming intelligence ; are you not bound to supple-
ment this mechanism by the assumption of an entity
which uses it ? In other words, are you not forced by
your own exposition into the hypothesis of a free human
soul ?

This is fair reasoning now, and at a certain stage of
the world’s knowledge, it might well have been deemed
conclusive. Adequate reflection, however, shows that
instead of introducing light into our minds, this hypo-
thesis considered scientifically increases our darkness.
You do not in this case explain the unknown in terms
of the known, which, as stated above, is the method of
science, but you explain the unknown in terms of the
more unknown. Try to mentally visualise this soul as
an entity distinct from the body, and the difficulty imme-
diately appears. From the side of science all that we are
warranted in stating is that the terror, hope, sensation,
and calculation of Lange’s merchant, are psychical phe-
nomena produced by, or associated with, the molecular
processes set up by waves of light in a previously
prepared brain.

When facts present themselves let us dare to face
them, but let the man of science equally dare to con-
fess ignorance where it prevails. What then is the
causal connection, if any, between the objective and
subjective — between molecular motions and states of
consciousness ? My answer is : I do not see the con-
nection, nor have I as yet met anybody who does.

358

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

It is no explanation to say that the objective and
subjective effects are two sides of one and the same
phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two
sides ? This is the very core of the difficulty. There
are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit
this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when
it runs into frost-ferns upon a window-pane ? If not,
why should the molecular motion of the brain be
yoked to this mysterious companion — consciousness?
We can form a coherent picture of the physical pro-
cesses—the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of the
nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the sub-
sequent mechanical motions of the organism. But we
can present to our minds no picture of the process
whereby consciousness emerges, either as a necessary
link or as an accidental by-product of this series of
actions. Yet it certainly does emerge — the prick of a
pin suffices to prove that molecular motion can produce
consciousness. The reverse process of the production of
motion by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the
mind. We are here, in fact, upon the boundary line of
the intellect, where the ordinary canons of science fail
to extricate us from our difficulties. If we are true to
these canons, we must deny to subjective phenomena all
influence on physical processes. Observation proves
that they interact, but in passing from one to the
other, we meet a blank which mechanical deduction is
unable to fill. Frankly stated, we have here to deal
with facts almost as difficult to seize mentally as the
idea of a soul. And if you are content to make your
‘ soul ’ a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which re-
fuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws, I, for one,
would not object to this exercise of ideality. Amid
all our speculative uncertainty, however, there is one
practical point as clear as the day ; namely, that the

SCIENCE AND MAN.

359

brightness and the usefulness of life, as well as its
darkness and disaster, depend to a great extent upon
our own use or abuse of this miraculous organ.

Accustomed as I am to harsh language, I am quite
prepared to hear my 4 poetic rendering ’ branded as a
4 falsehood ’ and a 4 fib.’ The vituperation is unmerited,
for poetry or ideality, and untruth are assuredly very
different things. The one may vivify, while the other
kills. When St. John extends the notion of a soul to
4 souls washed in the blood of Christ ’ does he 4 fib ’ ? In-
deed, if the appeal to ideality is censurable, Christ him-
self ought not to have escaped censure. Nor did he escape
it. 4 How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? ’ ex-
pressed the sceptical flouting of unpoetic natures. Such
are still amongst us. Cardinal Manning would doubt-
less tell any Protestant who rejects the doctrine of tran-
substantiation that he 4 fibs ’ away the plain words of
his Saviour when he reduces 4 the Body of the Lord ’ in
the sacrament to a mere figure of speech.

Though misuse may render it grotesque or insin-
cere, the idealisation of ancient conceptions, when done
consciously and above board, has, in my opinion, an im-
portant future. We are not radically different from
our historic ancestors, and any feeling which affected
them profoundly, requires only appropriate clothing to
affect us. The world will not lightly relinquish its heri-
tage of poetic feeling, and metaphysic will be welcomed
when it abandons its pretensions to scientific discovery
and consents to be ranked as a kind of poetry. 4 A good
symbol,’ says Emerson, 4 is a missionary to persuade
thousands. The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, are each
remembered by its happiest figure. There is no more
welcome gift to men than a new symbol. They assimilate
themselves to it, deal with it in all ways, and it will last
a hundred years. Then comes a new genius and brings

360

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

another.’ Our ideas of God and the soul are obviously
subject to this symbolic mutation. They are not now
what they were a century ago. They will not be a cen-
tury hence what they are now. Such ideas constitute a
kind of central energy in the human mind, capable,
like the energy of the physical universe, of assuming
various shapes and undergoing various transformations.
They baffle and elude the theological mechanic who
would carve them to dogmatic forms. They offer them-
selves freely to the poet who understands his vocation,
and whose function is, or ought to be, to find 4 local
habitation’ for thoughts woven into our subjective life,
but which refuse to be mechanically defined.

We now stand face to face with the final problem.
It is this : Are the brain, and the moral and intellec-
tual processes known to be associated with the brain —
and, as far as our experience goes, indissolubly associated
— subject to the laws which we find paramount in phy-
sical nature ? Is the will of man, in other words, free,
or are it and nature equally 4 bound fast in fate ’ ?
From this latter conclusion, after he had established it
to the entire satisfaction of his understanding, the great
German thinker Fichte recoiled. You will find the
record of this struggle between head and heart in his
book, entitled 4 Die Bestimmung des Menschen ’ — The
Vocation of Man.1 Fichte was determined at all
hazards to maintain his freedom, but the price he paid
for it indicates the difficulty of the task. To escape
from the iron necessity seen everywhere reigning in
physical nature, he turned defiantly round upon nature
and law, and affirmed both of them to be the products
of his own mind. He was not going to be the slave of
a thing which he had himself created. There is a good

1 Translated by Dr. William Smith of Edinburgh; Trubner, 1873.

SCIENCE AND MAN.

361

deal to be said in favour of this view, but few of us
probably would be able to bring into play the sol-
vent transcendentalism whereby Fichte melted bis
chains.

Why do some regard this notion of necessity with
terror, while others do not fear it at all ? Has not
Carlyle somewhere said that a belief in destiny is the
bias of all earnest minds ? 4 It is not Nature,’ says

Fichte, 4 it is Freedom itself, by which the greatest and
most terrible disorders incident to our race are pro-
duced. Man is the cruellest enemy of man.’ But the
question of moral responsibility here emerges, and it is
the possible loosening of this responsibility that so many
of us dread. The notion of necessity certainly failed to
frighten Bishop Butler. He thought it untrue — even
absurd — but he did not fear its practical consequences.
He showed, on the contrary, in the 4 Analogy,’ that as
far as human conduct is concerned, the two theories of
free-will and necessity would come to the same in the
end.

What is meant by free-will ? Does it imply the
power of producing events without antecedents ? — of
starting, as it were, upon a creative tour of occurrences
without any impulse from within or from without ?
Let us consider the point. If there be absolutely or
relatively no reason why a tree should fall, it will not
fall ; and if there be absolutely or relatively no reason
why a man should act, he will not act. It is true that
the united voice of this assembly could not persuade
me that I have not, at this moment, the power to lift
my arm if I wished to do so. Within this range the
conscious freedom of my will cannot be questioned.
But what about the origin of the 4 wish ’ ? Are we, or
are we not, complete masters of the circumstances
which create our wishes, motives, and tendencies to

362

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

action ? Adequate reflection will, I think, prove that
we are not. What, for example, have I had to do with
the generation and development of that which some will
consider my total being, and others a most potent factor
of my total being — the living, speaking organism which
now addresses you ? As stated at the beginning of this
discourse, my physical and intellectual textures were
woven for me, not by me. Processes in the conduct or
regulation of which I had no share have made me what
I am. Here, surely, if anywhere, we are as clay in the
hands of the potter. It is the greatest of delusions to
suppose that we come into this world as sheets of white
paper on which the age can write anything it likes,
making us good or bad, noble or mean, as the age
pleases. The age can stunt, promote, or pervert pre-
existent capacities, but it cannot create them. The
worthy Robert Owen, who saw in external circumstances
the great moulders of human character, was obliged to
supplement his doctrine by making the man himself
one of the circumstances. It is as fatal as it is
cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our
taste. How many disorders, ghostly and bodily, are
transmitted to us by inheritance ? In our courts of
law, whenever it is a question whether a crime has
been committed under the influence of insanity, the
best guidance the judge and jury can have is derived
from the parental antecedents of the accused. If
among these insanity be exhibited in any marked
degree, the presumption in the prisoner’s favour is
enormously enhanced, because the experience of life
has taught both judge and jury that insanity is fre-
quently transmitted from parent to child.

I met, some years ago, in a railway carriage the
governor of one of our largest prisons. He was evi-
dently an observant and reflective man, possessed of

SCIENCE AND MAN.

363

wide experience gathered in various parts of the world,
and a thorough student of the duties of his vocation.
He told me that the prisoners in his charge might be
divided into three distinct classes. The first class
consisted of persons who ought never to have been in
prison. External accident, and not internal taint, had
brought them within the grasp of the law, and what
had happened to them might happen to most of us.
They were essentially men of sound moral stamina,
though wearing the prison garb. Then came the
largest class, formed of individuals possessing no strong
bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circum-
stances, which could mould them into either good or
evil members of society. Thirdly came a class —
happily not a large one — whom no kindness could con-
ciliate and no discipline tame. They were sent into
this world labelled ‘ incorrigible,’ wickedness being
stamped, as it were, upon their organisations. It was
an unpleasant truth, but as a truth it ought to be faced.
For such criminals the prison over which he ruled was
certainly not the proper place. If confined at all, their
prison should be on a desert island where the deadly
contagium of their example could not taint the moral
air. But the sea itself he was disposed to regard as a
cheap and appropriate substitute for the island. It
seemed to him evident that the State would benefit if
prisoners of the first class were liberated ; prisoners of
the second class educated ; and prisoners of the third
class put compendiously under water.

It is not, however, from the observation of indi-
viduals that the argument against ‘ free-will,’ as com-
monly understood, derives its principal force. It is,
as already hinted, indefinitely strengthened when
extended to the race. Most of you have been forced to
listen to the outcries and denunciations which rang

364

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

discordant through the land for some years after the
publication of Mr. Darwin’s ‘ Origin of Species.’ Well,
the world— -even the clerical world — has for the most
part settled down in the belief that Mr. Darwin’s book
simply reflects the truth of nature : that we who are
now ‘ foremost in the files of time ’ have come to the
front through almost endless stages of promotion from
lower to higher forms of life.

If to any one of us were given the privilege of
looking back through the aeons across which life has
crept towards its present outcome, his vision, according
to Darwin, would ultimately reach a point when the
progenitors of this assembly could not be called human.
From that humble society, through the interaction of
its members and the storing up of their best qualities,
a better one emerged ; from this again a better still ;
until at length, by tbe integration of infinitesimals
through ages of amelioration, we came to be what we
are to-day. We of this generation had no conscious
share in the production of this grand and beneficent
result. Any and every generation which preceded us
had just as little share. The favoured organisms whose
garnered excellence constitutes our present store owed
their advantages, first, to what we in our ignorance are
obliged to call ‘ accidental variation ; ’ and, secondly,
to a law of heredity in the passing of which our
suffrages were not collected. With characteristic felicity
and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this question
into the free air of poetry, but not out of the atmo-
sphere of truth, when he ascribes the process of ameli-
oration to ‘a power not ourselves which makes for
righteousness.’ If, then, our organisms, with all their
tendencies and capacities, are given to us without our
being consulted ; and if, while capable of acting within
certain limits in accordance with our wishes, we are

SCIENCE AND MAN.

365

not masters of the circumstances in which motives and
wishes originate; if, finally, our motives and wishes
determine our actions — in what sense can these actions
be said to be the result of free-will ?

Here, again, we are confronted with the question of
moral responsibility, which, as it has been much talked
of lately, it is desirable to meet. With the view of
removing the fear of our falling back into the condition
of 4 the ape and tiger,’ so sedulously excited by certain
writers, I propose to grapple with this question in its
rudest form, and in the most uncompromising way.
4 If,’ says the robber, the ravisher, or the murderer, c I
act because I must act, what right have you to hold
me responsible for my deeds ? ’ The reply is, 4 The
right of society to protect itself against aggressive and
injurious forces, whether they be bond or free, forces of
nature or forces of man.’ c Then,’ retorts the criminal,
c you punish me for what I cannot help.’ 4 Let it be
granted,’ says society, 4 but had you known that the
treadmill or the gallows was certainly in store for you, you
might have 44 helped.” Let us reason the matter fully
and frankly out. We may entertain no malice or hatred
against you ; it is enough that with a view to our own
safety and purification we are determined that you and
such as you shall not enjoy liberty of evil action in our
midst. You, who have behaved as a wild beast, we
claim the right to cage or kill as we should a wild beast.
The public safety is a matter of more importance than
the very limited chance of your moral renovation, while
the knowledge that you have been hanged by the neck
may furnish to others about to do as you have done the
precise motive which will hold them back. If your act
be such as to invoke a minor penalty, then not only
others, but yourself, may profit by the punishment

366

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

which we inflict. On the homely principle that cC a
burnt child dreads the fire,” it will make you think
twice before venturing on a repetition of your crime.
Observe, finally, the consistency of our conduct. You
offend, you say, because you cannot help offending, to
the public detriment. We punish, is our reply, because
we cannot help punishing, for the public good. Prac-
tically, then, as Bishop Butler predicted, we act as the
world acted when it supposed the evil deeds of its cri-
minals to be the products of free-will.’ 1

‘ What,’ I have heard it argued, ‘ is the use of
preaching about duty, if a man’s predetermined posi-
tion in the moral world renders him incapable of pro-
fiting by advice ? ’ Who knows that he is incapable ?
The preacher’s last word is a factor in the man’s conduct,
and it may be a most important factor, unlocking moral
energies which might otherwise remain imprisoned and
unused. If the preacher thoroughly feel that words of
enlightenment, courage, and admonition enter into the
list of forces employed by Nature herself for man’s
amelioration, since she gifted man with speech, he will
suffer no paralysis to fall upon his tongue. Dung the
fig-tree hopefully, and not until its barrenness has been
demonstrated beyond a doubt let the sentence go forth,
4 Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground ? ’

I remember when a youth in the town of Halifax,
some two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture
given by a young man to a small but select audience.
The aspect of the lecturer was earnest and practical,
and his voice soon rivetted attention. He spoke of
duty, defining it as a debt owed, and there was a kind-
ling vigour in his words which must have strengthened

1 An eminent Church dignitary describes all this, not unkindly,
as ‘ truculent logic.’ I think it worthy of his Grace’s graver con-
sideration.

SCIENCE AND MAN.

367

the sense of duty in the minds of those who heard him.
No speculations regarding the freedom of the will could
alter the fact that the words of that young man did me
good. His name was Greorge Dawson. He also spoke,
if you will allow me to allude to it, of a social subjeot
much discussed at the time — the Chartist subject of
£ levelling.’ Suppose, he says, two men to be equal at
night, and that one rises at six, while the other sleeps
till nine next morning, what becomes of your levelling ?
And in so speaking he made himself the mouthpiece of
Nature, which, as we have seen, secures advance, not
by the reduction of all to a common level, but by the
encouragement and conservation of what is best.

It may be urged that, in dealing as above with my
hypothetical criminal, I am assuming a state of things
brought about by the influence of religions which in-
clude the dogmas of theology and the belief in free-
will— a state, namely, in which a moral majority control
and keep in awe an immoral minority. The heart of
man is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked. Withdraw, then, our theologic sanctions,
including the belief in free-will, and the condition of
the race will be typified by the samples of individual
wickedness which have been above adduced. We'shall
all, that is, become robbers, and ravishers, and murderers.
From much that has been written of late it would seem
that this astounding inference finds house-room in
many minds. Possibly, the people who hold such views
might be able to illustrate them by individual in-
stances.

The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,

To keep the wretch in order.

Remove the fear, and the wretch, following his natu-
ral instinct, may become disorderly ; but I refuse to
accept him as a sample of humanity. ‘ Let us eat and

368

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

drink, for to-morrow we die ’ is by no means the ethical
consequence of a rejection of dogma. To many of you
the name of George Jacob Holyoake is doubtless fami-
liar, and you are probably aware that at no man in
England has the term 4 atheist ’ been more frequently
pelted. There are, moreover, really few who have more
completely liberated themselves from theologic notions.
Among working-class politicians Mr. Holyoake is a
leader. Does he exhort his followers to 4 Eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die ’ ? Not so. In the August num-
ber of the 4 Nineteenth Century’ you will find these words
from his pen : ‘ The gospel of dirt is bad enough, but
the gospel of mere material comfort is much worse.’
He contemptuously calls the Comtist championship of
the working man, 4 the championship of the trencher.’
He would place 4 the leanest liberty which brought
with it the dignity and power of self-help ’ higher than
4 any prospect of a full plate without it.’ Such is the
moral doctrine taught by this 4 atheistic ’ leader ; and
no Christian, I apprehend, need be ashamed of it.

Most heartily do I recognise and admire the spirit-
ual radiance, if I may use the term, shed by religion
on the minds and lives of many personally known to
me. At the same time I cannot but observe how sig-
nally, as regards the production of anything beautiful,
religion fails in other cases. Its professor and defender
is sometimes at bottom a brawler and a clown. These
differences depend upon primary distinctions of charac-
ter which religion does not remove. It may comfort
some to know that there are amongst us many whom
the gladiators of the pulpit would call 4 atheists ’ and
4 materialists,’ whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by
any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more
than favourably with the lives of those who seek to
stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say

SCIENCE AND MAN.

369

‘ offensive,’ I refer simply to the intention of those who
use such terms, and not because atheism or materialism,
when compared with many of the notions ventilated in
the columns of religious newspapers, has any particular
offensiveness for me. If I wished to find men who are
scrupulous in their adherence to engagements, whose
words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of
any kind is subjectively unknown ; if I wanted a loving
father, a faithful husband, an honourable neighbour,
and a just citizen — I should seek him, and find him
among the band of 4 atheists ’ to which I refer. I have
known some of the most pronounced among them not
only in life but in death — seen them approaching with
open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a
‘ hangman’s whip,’ with no hope of a heavenly crown,
and still as mindful of their duties, and as faithful in
the discharge of them, as if their eternal future de-
pended upon their latest deeds.

In letters addressed to myself, and in utterances
addressed to the public, Faraday is often referred to as
a sample of the association of religious faith with moral
elevation. I was locally intimate with him for four-
teen or fifteen years of my life, and had thus occasion
to observe how nearly his character approached what
might, without extravagance, be called perfection. He
was strong but gentle, impetuous but self-restrained ; a
sweet and lofty courtesy marked his dealings with men
and women ; and though he sprang from the body of
the people, a nature so fine might well have been dis-
tilled from the flower of antecedent chivalry. Not only
in its broader sense was the Christian religion necessary
to Faraday’s spiritual peace, but in what many would
call the narrow sense held by those described by Fara-
day himself as 4 a very small and despised sect of
VOL. II. B B

370

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Christians, known, if known at all, as Sandemanians,’ it
constituted the light and comfort of his days.

Were our experience confined to such cases, it
would furnish an irresistible argument in favour of the
association of dogmatic religion with moral purity and
grace. But, as already intimated, our experience is not
thus confined. In further illustration of this point, we
may compare with Faraday a philosopher of equal mag-
nitude, whose character, including gentleness and
strength, candour and simplicity, intellectual power
and moral elevation, singularly resembles that of the
great Sandemanian, but who has neither shared the
theologic views nor the religious emotions which formed
so dominant a factor in Faraday’s life. I allude to
Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientiGc men — a
searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was
the patriarch to the command of God. I cannot there-
fore, as so many desire, look upon Faraday’s religious
belief as the exclusive source of qualities shared so
conspicuously by one uninfluenced by that belief. To
a deeper virtue belonging to human nature in its
purer forms I am disposed to refer the excellence of
both.

Superstition may be defined as constructive religion
which has grown incongruous with intelligence. We
may admit, with Fichte, 4 that superstition has un-
questionably constrained its subjects to abandon many
pernicious practices and to adopt many useful ones ; ’
the real loss accompanying its decay at the present day
has been thus clearly stated by the same philosopher :
4 In so far as these lamentations do not proceed from
the priests themselves — whose grief at the loss of their
dominion over the human mind we can well understand
— but from the politicians, the whole matter resolves
itself into this, that government has thereby become

SCIENCE AND MAN.

371

more difficult and expensive. The judge was spared
the exercise of his own sagacity and penetration when,
by threats of relentless damnation, he could compel the
accused to make confession. The evil spirit formerly
performed without reward services for which in later
times judges and policemen have to be paid.’

No man ever felt the need of a high and ennobling
religion more thoroughly than this powerful and fervid
teacher, who, by the way, did not escape the brand of
‘atheist.’ But Fichte asserted emphatically the power
and sufficiency of morality in its own sphere. ‘ Let us
consider,’ he says, ‘ the highest which man can possess
in the absence of religion — I mean pure morality. The
moral man obeys the law of duty in his breast abso-
lutely, because it is a law unto him ; and he does what-
ever reveals itself to him as his duty simply because it
is duty. Let not the impudent assertion be repeated
that such an obedience, without regard for consequences,
and without desire for consequences, is in itself im-
possible and opposed to human nature.’ So much for
Fichte. Faraday was equally distinct. ‘ I have no in-
tention,’ he says, ‘ of substituting anything for religion,
but I wish to take that part of human nature which is
independent of it. Morality, philosophy, commerce,
the various institutions and habits of society, are inde-
pendent of religion and may exist without it.’ These
were the words of his youth, but they expressed his
latest convictions. I would add, that the muse of
Tennyson never reached a higher strain than when it
embodied the sentiment of duty in ./Enone : — ■

And, because right is right, to follow right

Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

Not in the way assumed by our dogmatic teachers
has the morality of human nature been built up. The

B B 2

372

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

power which has moulded us thus far has worked with
stern tools upon a very rigid stuff. What it has done
cannot be so readily undone ; and it has endowed us
with moral constitutions which take pleasure in the
noble, the beautiful, and the true, just as surely as it
has endowed us with sentient organisms, which find
aloes bitter and sugar sweet. That power did not work
with delusions, nor will it stay its hand when such are
removed. Facts, rather than dogmas, have been its
ministers —hunger and thirst, heat and cold, pleasure
and pain, fervour, sympathy, aspiration, shame, pride,
love, hate, terror, awe — such were the forces whose in-
teraction and adjustment throughout an immeasurable
past wove the triplex web of man’s physical, intellectual,
and moral nature, and such are the forces that will
be effectual to the end.

You may retort that even on my own showing 4 the
power wThich makes for righteousness ’ has dealt in
delusions ; for it cannot be denied that the beliefs of
religion, including the dogmas of theology and the free-
dom of the will, have had some effect in moulding the
moral world. Gfranted ; but I do not think that this
goes to the root of the matter. Are you quite sure
that those beliefs and dogmas are primary, and not
derived ? — that they are not the 'products , instead of
being the creators, of man’s moral nature ? I think
it is in one of the Latter-Day Pamphlets that Carlyle
corrects a reasoner, who deduced the nobility of man
from a belief in heaven, by telling him that he puts
the cart before the horse, the real truth being that the
belief in heaven is derived from the nobility of man.
The bird’s instinct to weave its nest is referred to by
Emerson as typical of the force which built cathedrals,
temples, and pyramids : —

SCIENCE AND MAN.

373

Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast,

Or how the fish outbuilt its shell,

Painting' with morn each annual cell ?

Such and so grew these holy piles
While love and terror laid the tiles ;

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone ;

And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids ;

O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye ;

For out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,

And nature gladly gave them place,

Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

Surely, many utterances which have been accepted as
descriptions ought to be interpreted as aspirations, or
as having their roots in aspiration instead of in objec-
tive knowledge. Does the song of the herald angels,

4 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
goodwill toward men,’ express the exaltation and the
yearning of a human soul ? or does it describe an
optical and acoustical fact — a visible host and an audi-
ble song ? If the former, the exaltation and the yearn-
ing are man’s imperishable possession — a ferment long
confined to individuals, but which may by-and-by be-
come the leaven of the race. If the latter, then belief
in the entire transaction is wrecked by non-fulfilment.
Look to the East at the present moment as a comment
on the promise of peace on earth and goodwill toward
men. That promise is a dream ruined by the experi-
ence of eighteen centuries, and in that ruin is in-
volved the claim of the 4 heavenly host ’ to prophetic
vision. But though the mechanical theory proves un-
tenable, the immortal song and the feelings it expresses

374

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

are still ours, to be incorporated, let us hope, in purer
and less shadowy forms in the poetry, philosophy, and
practice of the future.

Thus, following the lead of physical science, we are
brought without solution of continuity into the presence
of problems which, as usually classified, lie entirely out-
side the domain of physics. To these problems thought-
ful and penetrative minds are now applying those
methods of research which in physical science have
proved their truth by their fruits. There is on all
hands a growing repugnance to invoke the supernatural
in accounting for the phenomena of human life ; and
the thoughtful minds just referred to, finding no trace
of evidence in favour of any other origin, are driven to
seek in the interaction of social forces the genesis and
development of man’s moral nature. If they succeed
in their search — and I think they are sure to succeed
— social duty will be raised to a higher level of signi-
ficance and the deepening sense of social duty will, it
is to be hoped, lessen, if not obliterate, the strifes and
heartburnings which now beset and disfigure our social
life. Towards this great end it behoves us one and all
to work ; and devoutly wishing its consummation, I
have the honour, ladies and gentlemen, to bid you a
friendly farewell.

375

XV.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION.

fT^HIS world of ours has, on the whole, been an incle-
JL ment region for the growth of natural truth; but
it may be that the plant is all the hardier for the
bendings and buffetings it has undergone. The tor-
turing of a shrub, within certain limits, strengthens it
Through the struggles and passions of the brute, man
reaches his estate ; through savagery and barbarism his
civilisation ; and through illusion and persecution his
knowledge of nature, including that of his own frame.
The bias towards natural truth must have been strong
to have withstood and overcome the opposing forces.
Feeling appeared in the world before Knowledge ; and
thoughts, conceptions, and creeds, founded on emotion,
had, before the dawn of science, taken root in man.
Such thoughts, conceptions, and creeds must have
met a deep and general want ; otherwise their growth
could not have been so luxuriant, nor their abiding
power so strong. This general need — this hunger for
the ideal and wonderful — led eventually to the differen-
tiation of a caste, whose vocation it was to cultivate
the mystery of life and its surroundings, and to give
shape, name, and habitation to the emotions which
that mystery aroused. Even the savage lived, not by
bread alone, but in a mental world peopled with forms
answering to his capacities and needs. As time
advanced — in other words, as the savage opened out
into civilised man— these forms were purified and

376

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

ennobled until they finally emerged in the mythology
and art of Greece : —

Where still the magic robe of Poesy-

Wound itself lovingly around the Truth.1

As poets, the priesthood would have been justified,
their deities, celestial and otherwise, with all their
retinue and appliances, being more or less legitimate
symbols and personifications of the aspects of nature
and the phases of the human soul. The priests, how-
ever, or those among them who were mechanics, and
not poets, claimed objective validity for their concep-
tions, and tried to base upon external evidence that
which sprang from the innermost need and nature of
man. It is against this objective rendering of the
emotions — this thrusting into the region of fact and
positive knowledge of conceptions essentially ideal and
poetic — that science, consciously or unconsciously, wages
war. Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other
part of human consciousness ; and against it, on its
subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain. But
when, manipulated by the constructive imagination,
mixed with imperfect or inaccurate historic data, and
moulded by misapplied logic, this feeling makes claims
which traverse our knowledge of nature, science, as in
duty bound, stands as a hostile power in its path. It is
against the mythologic scenery, if I may use the term,
rather than against the life and substance of religion,
that Science enters her protest. Sooner or later among
thinking people, that scenery will be taken for what it is
worth — as an effort on the part of man to bring the
mystery of life and nature within the range of his capa-
cities ; as a temporary and essentially fluxional render-

1 ‘ Da der Dichtung zauberische Hiille
Sich noch lieblich um die Wahrheit wand.’ — Schiller.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 6(1

iii g in terms of knowledge of that which transcends all
knowledge, and admits only of ideal approach.

The signs of the times, I think, point in this direc-
tion. It is, for example, the obvious aim of Mr.
Matthew Arnold to protect, amid the wreck of dogma,
the poetic basis of religion. And it is to be remem-
bered that under the circumstances poetry may be
the purest accessible truth. In other influential quar-
ters a similar spirit is at work. In a remarkable article
published by Professor Knight of St. Andrews in the
September number of the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ amid
other free utterances, we have this one : — 4 It matter is
not eternal, its first emergence into being is a miracle
beside which all. others dwindle into absolute insignifi-
cance. But, as has often been pointed out, the process
is unthinkable ; the sudden apocalypse of a material
world out of blank nonentity cannot be imagined ; 1 its
emergence into order out of chaos when “ without form
and void ” of life, is merely a 'poetic rendering of the
doctrine of its slow evolution .’ These are all bold
words to be spoken before the moral philosophy class of
a Scotch university, while those I have underlined show
a remarkable freedom of dealing with the sacred text.
They repeat in terser language what I ventured to utter
four years ago regarding the Book of Genesis. ‘Pro-
foundly interesting and indeed pathetic to me are those
attempts of the opening mind of man to appease its
hunger for a Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no
voice in scientific questions. It is a poem , not a
scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is for ever
beautiful ; in the latter it has been, and it will con-
tinue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful.’ My agree-

1 Professor Knight will have to reckon with the English
Marriage Service, one of whose Collects begins thus: ‘0 God, who
by thy mighty power hast made all things of nothing.’

378 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ment with Professor Knight extends still further.

‘ Does the vital,’ he asks, ‘ proceed by a still remoter
development from the non-vital? Or was it created
by a fiat of volition ? Or ’ — and here he emphasises
his question — ‘ has it always existed in some form
or other as an eternal constituent of the universe ?
I do not see,’ he replies, ‘ how we can escape from the
last alternative.’ With the whole force of my convic-
tion I say, Nor do I, though our modes of regarding
the ‘ eternal constituent ’ may not be the same.

When matter was defined by Descartes, he delibe-
rately excluded the idea of force or motion from its
attributes and from his definition. Extension only was
taken into account. And, inasmuch as the impotence
of matter to generate motion was assumed, its observed
motions were referred to an external cause. Grod, resi-
dent outside of matter, gave the impulse. In this con-
nection the argument in Young’s ‘ Night Thoughts’
will occur to most readers : —

Who Motion foreign to the smallest grain
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight ?

Who hid brute Matter’s restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly 1

Against this notion of Descartes the great deist John
Toland, whose ashes lie unmarked in Putney Church-
yard, strenuously contended. He affirmed motion to
be an inherent attribute of matter — that no portion of
matter was at rest, and that even the most quiescent
solids were animated by a motion of their ultimate
particles. The success of his contention, according to
the learned and laborious Dr. Berthold,1 entitles Toland
to be regarded as the founder of that monistic doctrine
which is now so rapidly spreading.

’“John Toland und der Monismus der Gegenwart,’ Heidelberg,
Carl Winter.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 379

It seems to me that the idea of vitality entertained
in our day by Professor Knight, closely resembles the
idea of motion entertained by his opponents in Toland’s
day. Motion was then virtually asserted to be a thing
sui generis , distinct from matter, and incapable of
being generated out of matter. Hence the obvious in-
ference when matter was observed to move. It was the
vehicle of an energy not its own — the repository of
forces impressed on it from without — the purely passive
recipient of the shock of the Divine. The logical
form continues, but the subject-matter is changed.
4 The evolution of nature,’ says Professor Knight, 4 may
be a fact ; a daily and hourly apocalypse. But we have
no evidence of the non-vital passing into the vital.
Spontaneous generation is, as yet, an imaginative guess,
unverified by scientific tests. And matter is not itself
alive. Vitality, whether seen in a single cell of proto-
plasm or in the human brain, is a thing sui generis ,
distinct from matter, and incapable of being generated
out of matter.’ It may be, however, that, in process of
time, vitality will follow the example of motion, and,
after the necessary antecedent wrangling, take its place
among the attributes of that 4 universal mother ’ who
has been so often misdefined.

That 4 matter is not itself alive ’ Professor Knio-ht

O

seems to regard as an axiomatic truth. Let us place in
contrast with this the notion entertained by the philo-
sopher Ueberweg, one of the subtlest heads that Ger-
many has produced. 4 What occurs in the brain ’ says
Ueberweg 4 would, in my opinion, not be possible, if the
process which here appears in its greatest concentration
did not obtain generally, only in a vastly diminished
degree. Take a pair of mice and a cask of flour. By
copious nourishment the animals increase and multiply,
and in the same proportion sensations and feelings aug-

380

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

ment. The quantity of these latter possessed by the
first pair, is not simply diffused among their descend-
ants, for in that case the last must feel more feebly than
the first. The sensations and feelings must necessarily
be referred back to the flour, where they exist, weak and
pale it is true, and not concentrated as they are in the
brain.’ 1 We may not be able to taste or smell alcohol
in a tub of fermented cherries, but by distillation we
obtain from them concentrated Kirschwasser. Hence
Ueberweg’s comparison of the brain to a still, which
concentrates the sensation and feeling, pre-existing, but
diluted in the food.

‘ Definitions,’ says Mr. Holyoake,2 4 grow as the
horizon of experience expands. They are not inventions,
but descriptions of the state of a question. No man
sees all through a discovery at once.’ Thus Descartes’s
notion of matter, and his explanation of motion, would
be put aside as trivial by a physiologist or a crystallo-
grapher of the present day. They are not descriptions
of the state of the question. And yet a desire some-
times shows itself in distinguished quarters to bind us
down to conceptions which passed muster in the infancy
of knowledge, but which are wholly incompatible with
our present enlightenment. Mr. Martineau, I think,
errs when he seeks to hold me to views enunciated by
4 Democritus and the mathematicians.’ That definitions
should change as knowledge advances is in accordance
both with sound sense and scientific practice. When,
for example, the undulatory theory was started, it was
not imagined that the vibrations of light could be trans-
verse to the direction of propagation. The example of
sound was at hand, which was a case of longitudinal

1 Letter to Lange: ‘Geschichte des Materialismus, zweite Aufl.,
vol. ii. p. 521.

2 ‘Nineteenth Century,’ September 1878.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 381

vibration. Now the substitution of transverse for longi-
tudinal vibrations in the case of light involved a radi-
cal change of conception as to the mechanical properties
of the luminiferous medium. But though this change
went so far as to fill space with a substance, possessing
the properties of a solid, rather than those of a gas, the
change was accepted, because the newly discovered facts
imperatively demanded it. Following Mr. Martineau’s
example, the opponent of the undulatory theory might
effectually twit the holder of it on his change of front.
‘ This aether of yours,’ he might say, 4 alters its style with
every change of service. Starting as a beggar, with
scarce a rag of c property 5 to cover its bones, it turns
up as a prince when large undertakings are wanted.
You had some show of reason when, with the case of
sound before you, you assumed your aether to be a gas
in the last extremity of attenuation. But now that new
service is rendered necessary by new facts, you drop the
beggar’s rags, and accomplish an undertaking, great and
princely enough in all conscience ; for it implies that
not only planets of enormous weight, but comets with
hardly any weight at all, fly through your hypothetical
solid without perceptible loss of motion.’ This would
sound very cogent, but it would be very vain. Equally
vain, in my opinion, is Mr. Martineau’s contention that
we are not justified in modifying, in accordance with
advancing knowledge, our notions of matter.

Before parting from Professor Knight, let me
commend his courage as well as his insight. We have
heard much of late of the peril to morality involved in
the decay of religious belief. What Mr. Knight says
under this head is worthy of all respect and attention.
‘I admit,’ he writes, ‘that were it proved that the
moral faculty was derived as well as developed, its
present decisions would not be invalidated. The child

382 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of experience lias a father whose teachings are grave,
peremptory, and august ; and an earthborn rule may
be as stringent as any derived from a celestial source.
It does not even follow that a belief in the material
origin of spiritual existence, accompanied by a corre-
sponding decay of belief in immortality, must necessarily
lead to a relaxation of the moral fibre of the race. It
is certain that it has often done so.1 But it is equally
certain that there have been individuals, and great
historical communities, in which the absence of the
latter belief has neither weakened moral earnestness, nor
prevented devotional fervour.’ I have elsewhere stated
that some of the best men of my acquaintance — men
lofty in thought and beneficent in act — belong to a class
who assiduously let the belief referred to alone. They
derive from it neither stimulus nor inspiration, while —
I say it with regret — were I in quest of persons who,
in regard to the finer endowments of human character,
are to be ranked with the unendowed, I should find some
characteristic samples among the noisier defenders of
the orthodox belief. These, however, are but ‘hand-
specimens ’ on both sides ; the wider data referred to by
Professor Knight constitute, therefore, a welcome cor-
roboration of my experience. Again, my excellent critic,
Professor Blackie, describes Buddha as being ‘ a great
deal more than a prophet ; a rare, exceptional, and
altogether transcendental incarnation of moral perfec-
tion.’ 2 And yet, ‘ what Buddha preached was a gospel
of pure human ethics, divorced not only from Brahma
and the Brahminic Trinity, but even from the exist-

1 Is this really certain ? Instead of standing in the relation of
cause and effect, may not the ‘ decay ’ and ‘ relaxation ’ be merely
coexistent, both, perhaps, flowing from common historic antece-
dents ?

2‘ Natural History of Atheism,’ p. 136.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 383

ence of God.’ 1 These civilised and gallant voices from
the North contrast pleasantly with the barbarous whoops
which sometimes come to us along’ the same meridian.

Looking backwards from my present standpoint
over the earnest past, a boyhood fond of play and
physical action, but averse to schoolwork, lies before
me. The aversion did not arise from intellectual
apathy or want of appetite for knowledge, but simply
from the fact that my earliest teachers lacked the power
of imparting vitality to what they taught. Athwart
all play and amusement, however, a thread of serious-
ness ran through my character ; and many a sleepless
night of my childhood has been passed, fretted by
the question { Who made G-od ? ’ I was well versed in
Scripture ; for I loved the Bible, and was prompted by
that love to commit large portions of it to memory.
Later on I became adroit in turning my Scriptural
knowledge against the Church of Rome, but the charac-
teristic doctrines of that Church marked only for a time
the limits of enquiry. The eternal Sonship of Christ,
for example, as enunciated in the Athanasian Creed,
perplexed me. The resurrection of the body was also a
thorn in my mind, and here I remember that a passage
in Blair’s ‘ Grave ’ gave me momentary rest.

Sure the same power

That rear’d the piece at first and took it down
Can reassemble the loose, scatter’d parts
And put them as they were.

The conclusion seemed for the moment entirely fair,
but with further thought, my difficulties came back
to me. I had seen cows and sheep browsing upon
churchyard grass, which sprang from the decaying
mould of dead men. The flesh of these animals was
1 ‘ Natural History of Atheism,’ p. 125.

334

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

undoubtedly a modification of human flesh, and the
persons who fed upon them were as undoubtedly, in
part, a more remote modification of the same substance.
I figured the self-same molecules as belonging first to
one body and afterwards to a different one, and I asked
myself how two bodies so related could possibly arrange
their claims at the day of resurrection. The scattered
parts of each were to be reassembled and set as they
were. But if handed over to the one, how could they
possibly enter into the composition of the other ?
Omnipotence itself, I concluded, could not reconcile
the contradiction. Thus the plank which Blair’s me-
chanical theory of the resurrection brought momentarily
into sight, disappeared, and I was again cast abroad on
the waste ocean of speculation.

At the same time I could by no means get rid of the
idea that the aspects of nature and the consciousness of
man implied the operation of a power altogether beyond
my grasp — an energy the thought of which raised the
temperature of the mind, though it refused to accept
shape, personal or otherwise, from the intellect. Perhaps
the able critics of the ‘Saturday Review’ are justified
in speaking as they sometimes do of Mr. Carlyle. They
owe him nothing, and have a right to announce the fact
in their own way. I, however, owe him a great deal,
and am also in honour bound to acknowledge the debt.
Few, perhaps, who are privileged to come into contact
with that illustrious man have shown him a sturdier
front than I have, or in discussing modern science have
more frequently withstood him. But 1 could see that
his contention at bottom always was that the human
soul has claims and yearnings which physical science
cannot satisfy. England to come will assuredly thank
him for his affirmation of the ethical and ideal side of
human nature. Be this as it may, at the period now

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 385

reached in my story the feeling referred to was indefi-
nitely strengthened, my whole life being at the same
time rendered more earnest, resolute, and laborious by
the writings of Carlyle. Others also ministered to this
result. Emerson kindled me, while Fichte powerfully
stirred my morql pulse.1 In this relation I cared little
for political theories or philosophic systems, but a great
deal for the propagated life and strength of pure and
powerful minds. In my later school-days, under a
clever teacher, some knowledge of mathematics and
physics had been picked up : my stock of both was,
however, scanty, and I resolved to augment it. But it
was really with the view of learning whether mathe-
matics and physics could help me in other spheres,
rather than with the desire of acquiring distinction in
either science, that I ventured, in 1848, to break the
continuity of my life, and devote the meagre funds
then at my disposal to the study of science in Germany.

But science soon fascinated me on its own ac-
count. To carry it duly and honestly out, moral
qualities were incessantly invoked. There was no
room allowed for insincerity — no room even for care-
lessness. The edifice of science had been raised by men
who had unswervingly followed the truth as it is in
nature ; and in doing so had often sacrificed interests
which are usually potent in this world. Among these
rationalistic men of Germany I found conscienti-
ousness in work as much insisted on as it could be
among theologians. And why, since they had not the
rewards or penalties of the theologian to offer to their
disciples? Because they assumed, and were justified in
assuming, that those whom they addressed had that

1 The reader will find in the Seventeenth Lecture of Fichte's
course on the ‘ Characteristics of the Present Age ’ a sample of the
vital power of this philosopher.

VOL. II. C C

386

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

within them which would respond to their appeal. If
Germany should ever change for something less noble
the simple earnestness and fidelity to duty, which in
those days characterised her teachers, and through them
her sons generally, it will not be because of rationalism.
Such a decadent Germany might coexist with the most
rampant rationalism without their standing to each
other in the relation of cause and effect.

My first really laborious investigation, conducted
jointly with my friend Professor Knoblauch, landed
me in a region which harmonised with my speculative
tastes. It was essentially an enquiry in molecular
physics, having reference to the curious, and then per-
plexing, phenomena exhibited by crystals when freely
suspended in the magnetic field. I here lived amid the
most complex operations of magnetism in its twofold
aspeet of an attractive and a repellent force. Iron was
attracted by a magnet, bismuth was repelled, and the
crystals operated on l'anged themselves under these two
heads. Faraday and Plueker had worked assiduously
at the subject, and had invoked the aid of new forces
to account for the phenomena. It was soon, however,
found that the displacement in a crystal of an atom of
the iron elass by an atom of the bismuth class, involving
no change of crystalline form, produced a complete
reversal of the phenomena. The lines through the
crystal which were in the one case drawn towards the
poles of the magnet, were driven, in the other case, from
these poles. By such instances and the reasoning which
they suggested, magne-crystallic action was proved to
be due, not to the operation of new forces, but to the
modification of the old ones by molecular arrangement.
Whether diamagnetism, like magnetism, was a polar
force, was in those days a subject of the most lively
contention. It was finally proved to be so ; and the

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 387

most complicated cases of magne-crystall'ic action were
immediately shown to be simple mechanical consequences
of the principle of .diamagnetic polarity. These early
researches, which occupied in all five years of my life,
and throughout which the molecular architecture of
crystals was an incessant subject of mental contemplation,
gave a tinge and bias to my subsequent scientific
thought, and their influence is easily traced in my
subsequent enquiries. For example, during nine
years of labour on the subject of radiation, heat and
light were handled throughout by me, not as ends, but
as instruments by the aid of which the mind might pen-
chance lay hold upon the ultimate particles of matter.

Scientific progress depends mainly upon two factors
which incessantly interact — the strengthening of the
mind by exercise, and the illumination of phenomena
by knowledge. There seems no limit to the insight
regarding physical processes which this interaction
carries in its train. Through such insight we are
enabled to enter and explore that subsensible world
into which all natural phenomena strike their roots, and
from which they derive nutrition. By it we are enabled
to place before the mind’s eye atoms and atomic motions
which lie far beyond the range of the senses, and to
apply to them reasoning as stringent as that applied
by the mechanician to the motions and collisions of
sensible masses. But once committed to such concep-
tions, there is a risk of being irresistibly led beyond
the bounds of inorganic nature. Even in those early
stages of scientific growth, I found myself more and
more compelled to regard not only crystals, but organic
structures, the body of man inclusive, as cases of
molecular architecture, infinitely more complex, it is
true, than those of inorganic nature, but reducible, in
the long run, to the same mechanical laws. In ancient

c c 2

388

fragments of science.

journals I find recorded ponderings and speculations
relating to these subjects, and attempts made, by refer-
ence to magnetic and crystalline phenomena, to present
some satisfactory image to the mind of the way in
which plants and animals are built up. Perhaps I
may be excused for noting a sample of these early
speculations, already possibly known to a few of my
readers, but which here finds a more suitable place than
that which it formerly occupied.

Sitting, in the summer of 1855, with my friend Dr.
Debus under the shadow of a massive elm on the bank
of a river in Normandy, the current of our thoughts and
conversation was substantially this : — We regarded the
tree above us. In opposition to gravity its molecules
had ascended, diverged into branches, and budded into
innumerable leaves. Yvhat caused them to do so —
a power external to themselves, or an inherent force ?
Science rejects- the outside builder ; let us, therefore,
consider from the other point of view the experience
of the present year. A low temperature had kept
back for weeks the life of the vegetable world. But
at length the sun gained power — or, rather, the cloud-
screen which our atmosphere had drawn between him
and us was removed — and life immediately kindled
under his warmth. But what is life, and how can
solar light and heat thus affect it? Near our elm
was a silver birch, with its leaves rapidly quivering in
the morning air. We had here motion, but not the
motion of life. Each leaf moved as a mass under the
influence of an outside force, while the motion of life
was inherent and molecular. How are we to figure
this molecular motion — the forces which it implies,
and the results which flow from them ? Suppose
the leaves to be shaken from the tree and enabled

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION.

389

to attract and repel each other. To fix the ideas,
suppose the point of each leaf to repel all the other
points and to attract the roots, and the root ot each
leaf to repel all other roots, but to attract the points.
The leaves would then resemble an assemblage of
little magnets abandoned freely to the interaction ot
their own forces. In obedience to these they would
arrange themselves, and finally assume positions of
rest, forming a coherent mass. Let us suppose the
breeze, which now causes them to quiver, to disturb the
assumed equilibrium. As often as disturbed there
would be a constant effort on the part of the leaves to
re-establish it ; and in making this effort the mass of
leaves would pass through different shapes and forms.
If other leaves, moreover, were at hand endowed with
similar forces, the attraction would extend to them — a
growth of the mass of leaves being the consequence.

We have strong reason for assuming that the
ultimate particles of matter — the atoms and molecules
of which it is made up — are endowed with forces
coarsely typified by those here ascribed to the leaves.
The phenomena of crystallisation lead, of necessity,
to this conception of molecular polarity. Under the
operation of such forces the molecules of a seed, like our
fallen leaves in the first instance, take up positions from
which they would never move if undisturbed by an
external impulse. But solar light and heat, which
come to us as waves through space, are the great agents
of molecular disturbance. On the inert molecules of
seed and soil these waves impinge, disturbing the
atomic equilibrium, which there is an immediate effort
to restore. The effort, incessantly defeated — for the
waves continue to pour in — is incessantly renewed ; in
the molecular struggle matter is gathered from the soil
and from the atmosphere, and built, in obedience to the

390 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

forces which guide the molecules, into the special form
of the tree. In a general way, therefore, the life of the
tree might he defined as an unceasing effort to restore
a disturbed equilibrium. In the building of crystals
Nature makes her first structural effort ; we have here
the earliest groping of the so-called 6 vital force,’ and
the manifestations of this force in plants and animals,
though, as already stated, indefinitely more complex, are
to be regarded of the same mechanical quality as those
concerned in the building of the crystal.

Consider the cycle of operations by which the seed
produces the plant, the plant the flower, the flower
again the seed, the causal line, returning with the fidelity
of a planetary orbit to its original point of departure.
Who or what planned this molecular rhythm ? We do
not know — science fails even to inform us whether it was
ever £ planned ’ at all. Yonder butterfly has a spot of
orange on its wing ; and if we look at a drawing made
a century ago, of one of the ancestors of that butterfly,
we probably find the selfsame spot upon the wing. For
a century the molecules have described their cycles.
Butterflies have been begotten, have been born, and
have died ; still we find the molecular architecture
unchanged. Who or what determined this persis-
tency of recurrence ? We do not know ; but we
stand within our intellectual range when we say
that there is probably nothing in that wing which
may not yet find its Newton to prove that the prin-
ciples involved in its construction are qualitatively
the same as those brought into play in the formation
of the solar system. We may even take a step further,
and affirm that the brain of man — the organ of his
reason — without which he can neither think nor feel, is
also an assemblage of molecules, acting and reacting
according to law. Here, however, the methods pursued

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 391

in mechanical science come to an end ; and if asked
to deduce from the physical interaction of the brain
molecules the least of the phenomena of sensation or
thought, I acknowledge my helplessness. The associ-
ation of both with the matter of the brain may be
as certain as the association of light with the rising
of the sun. But whereas in the latter case we have
unbroken mechanical connection between the sun and
our organs, in the former case logical continuity dis-
appears. Between molecular mechanics and conscious-
ness is interposed a fissure over which the ladder of
physical reasoning is incompetent to carry us. We
must, therefore, accept the observed association as an
empirical fact, without being able to bring it under the
yoke of a priori deduction.

Such were the ponderings which ran habitually
through my mind in the days of my scientific youth.
They illustrate two things — a determination to push
physical considerations to their utmost legitimate limit ;
and an acknowledgment that physical considerations
do not lead to the final explanation of all that we feel
and know. This acknowledgment, be it said in passing,
was by no means made with the view of providing room
for the play of considerations other than physical. The
same intellectual duality, if I may use the phrase,
manifests itself in the following extract from an article
entitled ‘ Physics and Metaphysics,’ published in the
‘ Saturday Review ’ for August 4, 1860 : —

‘ The philosophy of the future will assuredly take
more account than that of the past of the dependence
of thought and feeling on physical processes ; and it
may be that the qualities of the mind will be studied
through organic combinations as we now study the
character of a force through the affections of ordinary

392

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

matter. We believe that every thought and every
feeling has its definite mechanical correlative — that it
is accompanied hy a certain breaking up and remar-
shalling of the atoms of the brain. This latter process
is purely physical ; and were the faculties we now
possess sufficiently expanded, without the creation of
any new faculty, it would doubtless be within the range
of our augmented powers to infer from the molecular
state of the brain the character of the thought acting
on it, and, conversely, to infer from the thought the
exact molecular condition of the brain. We do not
say — and this, as will be seen, is all-important — that
the inference here referred to would be an a ‘priori
one. But by observing, with the faculties we assume,
the state of the brain and the associated mental affec-
tions, both might be so tabulated side by side that, if
one were given, a mere reference to the table would
declare the other. Our present powers, it is true,
shrivel into nothingness when brought to bear on such
a problem, but it is because of its complexity and our
limits that this is the case. The quality of the problem
and of our powers are, we believe, so related, that a
mere expansion of the latter would enable them to cope
with the former. Why, then, in scientific speculation
should we turn our eyes exclusively to the past ? May
it not be that a time is coming — ages no doubt distant,
but still advancing — when the dwellers upon this fair
earth, starting from the gross human brain of to-day
as a rudiment, may be able to apply to these mighty
questions faculties of commensurate extent? Given
the requisite expansibility to the present senses and
intelligence of man — given also the time necessary for
their expansion — and this high goal may be attained.
Development is all that is required, and not a change
of quality. There need be no absolute breach of con-

393

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION.

tinnity between us and our loftier brothers yet to
come.

c We have guarded ourselves against saying that
the inferring of thought from material combinations
and arrangements would be an inference <x priori. 1 he
inference meant would be the same in kind as that
which the observation of the effects of food and drink
upon the mind would enable us to make, differing only
from the latter in the degree of analytical insight which
we suppose attained. Gfiven the masses and distances
of the planets, we can infer the perturbations consequent
on their mutual attractions. Given the nature of a
disturbance in water, air, or aether — knowing the physical
qualities of the medium we can infer how its particles
will be affected. In all this we deal with physical laws.
The mind runs with certainty along the line of thought
which connects the phenomena, and from beginning to
end there is no break in the chain. But when we endea-
vour to pass by a similar process from the phenomena of
physics to those of thought, we meet a problem which
transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers
which we now possess. We may think over the subject
again and again, but it eludes all intellectual present-
ation. We stand at length face to face with the In-
comprehensible. The territory of physics is wide, but
it has its limits from which we look with vacant gaze
into the region beyond. Let us follow matter to its
utmost bounds, let us claim it in all its forms — even in
the muscles, blood, and brain of man himself — as
ours to experiment with and to speculate upon. Cast-
ing the term “ vital force ” from our vocabulary, let us
reduce, if we can, the visible phenomena of life to
mechanical attractions and repulsions. Having thus
exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, a mighty
Mystery still looms beyond us. We have, in fact, made
no step towards its solution. And thus it will ever

394 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

loom, compelling the philosophies of successive ages to
confess that

“ We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded by a sleep.” ’

In my work on 4 Heat,’ published in 1863 and re-
published many times since, I employ the precise
language thus extracted from the 4 Saturday Review.’

The distinction is here clearly brought out which I
had resolved at all hazards to draw — that, namely, be-
tween what men knew or might know, and what they
could never hope to know. Impart simple magnifying
power to our present vision, and the atomic motions of
the brain itself might be brought into view. Compare
these motions with the corresponding states of con-
sciousness, and an empirical nexus might be estab-
lished ; but 4 we try to soar in a vacuum when we
endeavour to pass by logical deduction from the one to
the other.’ Among these brain-effects a new product
appears which defies mechanical treatment. We cannot
deduce motion from consciousness or consciousness from
motion as we deduce one motion from another. Never-
theless observation is open to us, and by it relations
may be established which are at least as valid as those
of the deductive reason. The difficulty may really lie
in the attempt to convert a datum into an inference —
an ultimate fact into a product of logic. My desire for
the moment, however, is not to theorise, but to let facts
speak in reply to accusation.

The most 4 materialistic ’ speculation for which I
was responsible, prior to the 4 Belfast Address,’ is em-
bodied in the following extract from a brief article
written as far back as 186.5 : — 4 Supposing the molecules
of the human body, instead of replacing others, and
thus renewing a pre-existing form, to be gathered first-

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION.

395

hand from nature, and plaeed in the exact relative posi-
tions which they occupy in the body. Supposing them
to have the same forces and distribution oi forces, the
same motions and distribution of motions — would this
organised concourse of molecules stand before us as a
sentient, thinking being ? There seems no valid reason
to assume that it would not. Or supposing a planet
carved from the sun, set spinning round an axis, and
sent revolving round the sun at a distance equal to that
of our earth, would one consequence of the refrigeration
of the mass be the development of organic forms ? I
lean to the affirmative.’ This is plain speaking, but
it is without 4 dogmatism.’ An opinion is expressed, a
belief, a leaning — not an established 4 doctrine.’

The burthen of my writings in this connection is as
much a recognition of the weakness of science as an
assertion of its strength. In 1867, I told the working
men of Dundee that while making the largest demand
for freedom of investigation ; while considering science
to be alike powerful as an instrument of intellectual
culture, and as a ministrant to the material wants of
men ; if asked whether science has solved, or is likely
in our day to solve, 4 the problem of the universe,’ I must
shake my head in doubt. I compare the mind of man
to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes,
beyond which in both directions exists infinite silence.
The phenomena of matter and force come within our
intellectual range ; but behind, and above, and around
i us the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and,
as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution.

While refreshing my mind on these old themes I
appear to myself as a person possessing one idea, which
I30 over-masters him that he is never weary of re-
peating it. That idea is the polar conception of the
: grandeur and the littleness of man — the vastness of liia

396

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

range in some respects and directions, and his power-
lessness to take a single step in others. In 1868,
before the Mathematical and Physical Section of the
British Association, then assembled at Norwich, I repeat
the same well-worn note : —

‘ In thus affirming the growth of the human body
to be mechanical, and thought as exercised by us to have
its correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of
the “ materialist,” as far as that position is tenable, is
stated. I think the materialist will be able finally to
maintain this position against all attacks, but I do not
think he can pass beyond it. The problem of the con-
nection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern
form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus
is a constituent of the human brain, and a trenchant
German writer has exclaimed, “ Olme Phosphor kein
gedanke ! ” That may or may not be the case ; but, even
if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not
lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here
assigned to the materialist, he is equally helpless. If
you ask him whence is this “ matter ” of which we have
been discoursing — who or what divided it into mole-
cules, and impressed upon them this necessity of run-
ning into organic forms — he has no answer. Science is
also mute in regard to such questions. But if the
materialist is confounded and science is rendered dumb,
who else is prepared with an answer ? Let us lower our
heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philo-
sopher, one and all.’

The roll of echoes which succeeded the Lecture
delivered by Professor Virchow at Munich on September
22, 1877, was long and loud. The ‘ Times ’ published a
nearly full translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly
commented on in other journals. Glances from it to an

PROFESSOR VIROIIOW AND EVOLUTION. 397

Address delivered by me before the Midland Institute in
the autumn of 1877, and published in this volume, were
very frequent. Professor Virchow was held up to me in
some quarters as a model of philosophic caution, who
by his reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his
depth reproved my shallowness. With true theologic
courtesy I was sedulously emptied, not only of the
4 principles of scientific thought,’ but of 4 common
modesty ’ and 4 common sense.’ And though I am in-
debted to Professor Clifford for recalling in the 4 Nine-
teeth Century ’ for April the public mind in this con-
nection from heated fancy to sober fact, I do not think
a brief additional examination of Virchow’s views, and
of my relation to them, will be out of place here.

The key-note of his position is struck in the preface
to the excellent English translation of his lecture — a
preface written expressly by himself. 4 Nothing,’ he
says, 4 was farther from his intention than any wish to
disparage the great services rendered by Mr. Darwin to
the advancement of biological science, of which no one
has expressed more admiration than himself. On the
other hand, it seemed high time to him to enter an
energetic protest against the attempts that are made to
proclaim the problems of research as actual tacts, and the
opinions of scientists as established science.’ On the
ground, among others, that it promotes the pernicious
delusions of the Socialist, Virchow considers the theory
of evolution dangerous ; but his fidelity to truth is so great
that he would brave the danger and teach the theory, if
it were only proved. 4 However dangerous the state of
things might be, let the confederates be as mischievous
as they might, still I do not hesitate to say that from
the moment when we had become convinced that the
evolution theory was a perfectly established doctrine —
so certain that we could pledge our oath to it, so sure

398

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

that we could say, “ Thus it is ” — from that moment we
could not dare to feel any scruple about introducing it
into our actual life, so as not only to communicate it to
every educated man, but to impart it to every child, to
make it the foundation of our whole ideas of the world,
of society, and the State, and to base upon it our whole
system of education. This I hold to be a necessity.’

It would be interesting to know the persons desig-
nated by the pronoun ‘ we ’ in the first sentence of the
foregoing quotation. No doubt Professor Haeckel
would accept this canon in all its fulness, and found
on it his justification. He would say without hesita-
tion : 6 I am convinced that the theory of evolution is a
perfectly established doctrine, and hence on your own
showing I am justified in urging its introduction into
our schools.’ It is plain, however, that Professor
Virchow would not accept this retort as valid. His
‘ we ’ must cover something more than Professor
Haeckel. It would probably cover more even than the
audience he addressed ; for he would hardly affirm,
even if every one of his hearers accepted the theory of
evolution, that that would be a sufficient warrant for
forcing it upon the public at large. His ‘we,’ I
submit, needs definition. If he means that the theory
of evolution ought to be introduced into our schools,
not when experts are agreed as to its truth, but when
the community is prepared for its introduction, then, I
think, he is right, and that, as a matter of social
policy, Dr. Haeckel would be wrong in seeking to
antedate the period of its introduction. In dealing
with the community great changes must have timeli-
ness as well as truth upon their side. But if the
mouths of thinkers be stopped, the necessary social
preparation will be impossible ; an unwholesome divorce
will be established between the expert and the public^

PEOFESSOE VIECHOW AND EVOLUTION. 399

and the slow and natural process of leavening the social
lump by discovery and discussion will be displaced by
something far less safe and salutary.

The burthen, however, of this celebrated lecture is a
warning that a marked distinction ought to be made be-
tween that which is experimentally proved, and that which
is still in the region of speculation. As to the latter,
Virchow by no means imposes silence. He is far too
sagacious a man to commit himself, at the present time
of day, to any such absurdity. But he insists that it
ought not to be put on the same evidential level as the
former. 4 It ought,’ as he poetically expresses it, 4 to
be written in small letters under the text.’ The
audience ought to be warned that the speculative
matter is only possible, not actual truth — that it
belongs to the region of 4 belief,’ and not to that of
demonstration. As long as a problem continues in this
speculative stage it would be mischievous, he considers,
to teach it in our schools. 4 We ought not,’ he urges,
4 to represent our conjecture as a certainty, nor our
hypothesis as a doctrine: this is inadmissible.’ With
regard to the connection between physical processes and
mental phenomena he says : 4 1 will, indeed, willingly
grant that we can find certain gradations, certain
definite points at which we trace a passage from mental
processes to processes purely physical, or of a physical
character. Throughout this discourse I am not asserting
that it will never be possible to bring psychical processes
into an immediate connection with those that are
physical. All I say is that we have at present no right
to set up this possible connection as a doctrine of
science.’ In the next paragraph he reiterates his
position with reference to the introduction of such
topics into school teaching. 4 We must draw,’ he says,
4 a strict distinction between what we wish to teach ,

400

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

and what we wish to search for. The objects of our
research are expressed as problems (or hypotheses).
We need not lceep them to ourselves ; ice are ready to
communicate them to all the world , and say “ There is
the problem ; that is what we strive for.” . . . The
investigation of such problems, in which the whole
nation may be interested, cannot be restricted to any
one. This is Freedom of Enquiry. But the problem
(or hypothesis) is not, without further debate, to be
made a doctrine .’ He will not concede to Dr. Haeckel
4 that it is a question for the schoolmasters to decide,
whether the Darwinian theory of man’s descent should
be at once laid down as the basis of instruction, and
the protoplastic soul be assumed as the foundation of all
ideas concerning spiritual being.’ The Professor con-
cludes his lecture thus : ‘ With perfect truth did Bacon
say of old 44 Scientia est potentia .” But he also defined
that knowledge ; and the knowledge he meant was not
speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypotheses,
but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentle-
men, I think we should be abusing our power, we
should be imperilling our power, unless in our teaching
we restrict ourselves to this perfectly safe and un-
assailable domain. From this domain we may make
incursions into the field of problems , and lam sure
that every venture of that kind will then find all
needful security and support.’ I have emphasised by
italics two sentences in the foregoing series of quota-
tions ; the other italics are the author’s own.

Virchow’s position could not be made clearer by
any comments of mine than he has here made it him-
self. That position is one of the highest practical
importance. ‘ Throughout our whole German Father-
land,’ he says, ‘ men are busied in renovating, extending,
and developing the system of education, and in invent-

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 401

ing fixed forms in which to mould it. On the threshold
of coming events stands the Prussian law of education.
In all the German States larger schools are being built,
new educational establishments are set up, the univer-
sities are extended, “ higher ” and “ middle ” schools are
founded. Finally comes the question, What is to be
the chief substance of the teaching ? ’ What Virchow
thinks it ought and ought not to be, is disclosed by the
foregoing quotations. There ought to be a clear dis-
tinction made between science in the state of hypothesis,
and science in the state of fact. In school teaching
the former ought to be excluded. And, as he assumes
it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion
ought, he thinks, to fall upon the theory of evolution.

I now freely offer myself for judgment before the
tribunal whose law is here laid down. First and
foremost, then, I have never advocated the introduction
of the theory of evolution into our schools. I should
even be disposed to resist its introduction before its
meaning had been better understood and its utility
more fully recognised than it is now by the great
body of the community. The theory ought, I
think, to bide its time until the free conflict of dis-
covery, argument, and opinion has won for it this
recognition. A necessary condition here, however, is
that free discussion should not be prevented, either by
the ferocity of reviewers or the arm of the law ; other-
wise, as I said before, the work of social preparation
cannot go on. On this count, then, I claim ac-
quittal, being for the moment on the side of Virchow.

Besides the duties of the chair, which I have been
privileged to occupy in London for more than a quarter
of a century, and which never involved a word on my
part, pro or con., in reference to the theory of evolu-

VOL. II. d n

402

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

tion, I have had the honour of addressing audiences in
Liverpool, Belfast, and Birmingham ; and in these
addresses the theory of evolution, and the connected
doctrine of spontaneous generation, have been more
or less touched upon. Let us now examine whether
in my references I have departed from the views of
Virchow or not.

In the Liverpool discourse, after speaking of the
theory of evolution when applied to the primitive con-
dition of matter, as belonging to ‘ the dim twilight of
conjecture,’ and affirming that ‘the certainty of experi-
mental enquiry is here shut out,’ I sketch the nebular
theory as enunciated by Kant and Laplace, and after-
wards proceed thus : ‘ Accepting some such view of the
construction of our system as ■probable , a desire imme-
diately arises to connect the present life of our planet
with the past. We wish to know something of our
remotest ancestry. On its first detachment from the
sun, life, as we understand it, could not have been
present on the earth. How, then, did it come there ?
The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom
— a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which
checks licentiousness in speculation — while the thing to
be repressed, both in science and out of it, is dogmatism.
And here I am in the hands of the meeting, willing to
end but ready to go on. I have no right to intrude
upon you unasked the unforvied notions which are
floating like clouds , or gathering to more solid con-
sistency in the modern speculative mind.'

I then notice more especially the basis of the theory.

‘ Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no
means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data , and
they only yield to it a provisional assent. They re-
gard the nebular hypothesis as probable ; and, in the
utter absence of any proof of the illegality of the

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 403

act, they prolong the method of nature from the pre-
sent into the past. Here the observed uniformity of
nature is their only guide. Having determined the
elements of their curve in a world of observation and
experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent
world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of
development from the nebula to the present time.’
Thus it appears that, long antecedent to the publication
of his advice, I did exactly what Professor Virchow
recommends, showing myself as careful as he could be
not to claim for a scientific doctrine a certainty which
did not belong to it.

I now pass on to the Belfast Address, and will cite
at once from it the passage which has given rise to the
most violent animadversion. ‘ Believing as I do in the
continuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our
microscopes cease to be of use. At this point the vision
of the mind authoritatively supplements that of the
eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary
of the experimental evidence, and discern in that
“ matter ” which we, in our ignorance of its latent
powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence
for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium,
the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.’ With-
out halting for a moment I go on to do the precise
thing which Professor Virchow declares to be necessary.
‘ If you ask me,’ I say, e whether there exists the least
evidence to prove that any form of life can be developed
out of matter independently of antecedent life, my
reply is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive
by many has been adduced, and that were we to follow
a common example, and accept testimony because it
falls in with our belief, we should eagerly close with
the evidence referred to. But there is in the true man
of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his

D D 2

404

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

beliefs upheld ; namely, the desire to have them true.
•And those to whom I refer as having studied this
question, believing the evidence offered in favour of
spontaneous generation ” to be vitiated by error,
cannot accept it. They know full well that the chemist
now prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of
substances, which were some time ago regarded as the
products solely of vitality. They are intimately ac-
quainted with the structural power of matter, as evi-
denced in the phenomena of crystallisation. They can
justify scientifically their belief in its potency, under
the proper conditions, to produce organisms. But, in
reply to your question, they will frankly admit their
inability to point to any satisfactory experimental
proof that life can be developed, save from demonstrable
antecedent life.’ 1

Comparing the theory of evolution with other
theories, I thus express myself : ‘ The basis of the doc-
trine of evolution consists, not in an experimental de-
monstration— for the subject is hardly accessible to this
mode of proof — but in its general harmony with
scientific thought. From contrast, moreover, it derives
enormous relative strength. On the one side we have
a theory, which converts the Power whose garment is
seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned
after the human model, and acting by broken efforts,
as man is seen to act. On the other side we have
the conception that all we see around us and feel within
us — the phenomena of physical nature as well as those
of the human mind — have their unsearchable roots
in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an in-
finitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation
of man.’ Among thinking people, in my opinion, this
last conception has a higher ethical value than that of
1 Quoted by Clifford, * Nineteenth Century,’ 3, p. 726.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 405

a personal artificer. Be that as it may, I make here
no claim for the theory of evolution which can reason-
ably be refused.

‘ Ten years have elapsed ’ said Dr. Hooker at Norwich
in 1868 1 ‘since the publication of “The Origin of
Species by Natural Selection,” and it is therefore not too
early now to ask what progress that bold theory has
made in scientific estimation. Since the “ Origin ”
appeared it has passed through four English editions,2
two American, two German, two French, several
Eussian, a Dutch, and an Italian edition. So far from
Natural Selection being a thing of the past [the
‘ Athenaeum ’ had stated it to be so] it is an accepted
doctrine with almost every philosophical naturalist, in-
cluding, it will always be understood, a considerable
proportion who are not prepared to admit that it
accounts for all Mr. Darwin assigns to it.’ In the
following year, at Innsbruck, Helmholtz took up the
same ground.3 Another decade has now passed, and he
is simply blind who cannot see the enormous progress
made by the theory during that time. Some of the
outward and visible signs of this advance are readily in-
dicated. The hostility and fear which so long prevented
the recognition of Mr. Darwin by his own university

1 President’s Address to the British Association.

2 Published by Mr. John Murray, the English publisher of Vir-
chow’s Lecture. Bane and antidote are thus impartially distributed
by the same hand.

3 ‘ Noch besteht lebhafter Streit run die Wahrheit oder Wahr-
scheinlichkeit von Darwin’s Theorie ; er dreht sich aber doch eigent-
lich nur um die Grenzen, welche wir fur die Veriinderlichkeit der
Arten annehmen diirfen. Dass innerhalb derselben Species erbliche
Racenverschiedenheiten auf die von Darwin beschriebene Weise zu

ikommen konnen, ja dass viele der bisher als verschiedene Species
derselben Gattung betrachteten Formen von derselben Urform
abstammen, werden auch seine Gegner kaum leugnen.’ — (Pojmlcire
Vortrage.')

406

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

have vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid universal
acclamation, conferred on him her Doctor's degree. The
Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had so long per-
sistently closed its doors against Mr. Darwin, has also
yielded at last ; while sermons, lectures, and published
articles plainly show that even the clergy have, to a
great extent, become acclimatised to the Darwinian
air. My brief reference to Mr. Darwin in the Birming-
ham Address was based upon the knowledge that such
changes had been accomplished, and were still going on.

That the lecture of Professor Virchow can, to any
practical extent disturb this progress of public faith
in the theory of evolution, I do not believe. That the
special lessons of caution which he inculcates were ex-
emplified by me, years before his voice was heard upon
this subject, has been proved in the foregoing pages.
In point of fact, if he had preceded me instead of
following me, and if my desire had been to incorporate
his wishes in my words, I could not have accomplished
this more completely. It is possible, moreover, to draw
the coincident lines still further, for most of what he
has said about spontaneous generation might have
been uttered by me. I share his opinion that the
theory of evolution in its complete form involves
the passage from matter which we now hold to be
inorganic into organised matter ; in other words,
involves the assumption that at some period or other of
the earth’s history there occurred what would be now
called 4 spontaneous generation.’ I agree with him
that 6 the proofs of it are still wanting.’ ‘ Whoever,’ he
says, ‘recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the
attempts made very recently to discover a. decided
support for the genercitio cequivocct in the lower forms
of transition from the inorganic to the organic world
will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory,

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 407

so utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as
the basis of all our views of life.’ I hold with Virchow
that the failures have been lamentable, that the doc-
trine is utterly discredited. But my position here is so
well known that I need not dwell upon it further.

With one special utterance of Professor Virchow his
translator connects me by name. ‘ I have no objection,’
observes the Professor, ‘ to your saying that atoms of
carbon also possess mind, or that in their connection
with the Plastidule company they acquire mind ; only
I do not know hoiv I am to ■perceive this.' This is
substantially what I had said seventeen years previously
in the ‘ Saturday Review.’ The Professor continues :
‘ If I explain attraction and repulsion as exhibitions of
mind, as psychical phenomena, I simply throw the
Psyche out of the window, and the Psyche ceases to be
a Psyche.’ I may say, in passing, that the Psyche that
could be cast out of the window is not worth house-
room. At this point the translator, who is evidently a
man of culture, strikes in with a foot-note. ‘ As an
illustration of Professor Virchow’s meaning, we may
quote the conclusion at which Doctor Tyndall arrives
respecting the hypothesis of a human soul, offered as
an explanation or a simplification of a series of obscure
phenomena — psychical phenomena, as he calls them.
“ If you are content to make your soul a poetic rendering
of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of ordinary
physical laws, I, for one, would not object to this
exercise of ideality.” ’ 1 Professor Virchow’s meaning,
I admit, required illustration ; but I do not clearly
see how the quotation from me subserves this purpose.
I do not even know whether I am cited as meriting

O

1 Presidential Address delivered before the Birmingham and
Midland Institute, October 1, 1877. ‘ Fortnightly Review,’ Nov. 1,
1877, p. 607.

408

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

praise or deserving opprobrium. In a far coarser
fashion this utterance of mine has been dealt with in
other places : it may therefore be worth while to spend
a few words upon it.

The sting of a wasp at the finger-end announces
itself to the brain as pain. The impression made by
the sting travels, in the first place, with comparative
slowness along the nerves affected ; and only when it
reaches the brain have we the fact of consciousness.
Those who think most profoundly on this subject hold
that a chemical change, which, strictly interpreted, is
atomic motion, is, in such a case, propagated along the
nerve, and communicated to the brain. Again, on feel-
ing the sting I flap the insect violently away. What
has caused this motion of my hand ? The command
from the brain to remove the insect travels along the
motor nerves to the proper muscles, and, their force
being unlocked, they perform the work demanded of
them. But what moved the nerve molecules which
unlocked the muscle ? The sense of pain, it may be
replied. But how can a sense of pain, or any other
state of consciousness, make matter move ? Not all
the sense of pain or pleasure in the world could lift a
stone or move a billiard-ball ; why should it stir a
molecule ? Try to express the motion numerically in
terms of the sensation, and the difficulty immediately
appears. Hence the idea long ago entertained by
philosophers, but lately brought into special prominence,
that the physical processes are complete in themselves,
and would go on just as they do if consciousness were
not at all implicated. Consciousness, on this view, is
a kind of by-product inexpressible in terms of force
and motion, and unessential to the molecular changes
going on in the brain.

Four years ago, I wrote thus: ‘Do states of con-

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 409

sciousness enter as links into the chain of antecedence
and sequence, which gives rise to bodily actions ? Speak-
ing- for myself, it is certain that 1 have no power of
imagining such states interposed between the molecules
of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion
among the molecules. The thing “ eludes all mental
presentation.” Hence an iron strength seems to belong
to the logic which claims for the brain an automatic
action uninfluenced by consciousness. But it is, I
believe, admitted by those who hold the automaton
theory, that states of consciousness are produced by the
motion of the molecules of the braiu ; and this produc-
tion of consciousness by molecular motion is to me quite
as unpresentable to the mental vision as the production of
molecular motion by consciousness. If I reject one result
I must reject both. I, however , reject neither , and
thus stand in the presence of two Incomprehensibles,
instead of one Incomprehensible.’ Here I secede from
the automaton theory, though maintained by friends
who have all my esteem, and fall back upon the avowal
which occurs with such wearisome iteration through-
out the foregoing pages ; namely, my own utter in-
capacity to grasp the problem.

This avowal is repeated with emphasis in the
passage to which Professor Virchow’s translator draws
attention. What, I there ask, is the causal connection
between the objective and the subjective — between
molecular motions and states of consciousness ? My
answer is : I do not see the connection, nor am I
acquainted with anybody who does. It is no explana-
tion to say that the objective and subjective are two sides
of one and the same phenomenon. Why should the
phenomenon have two sides ? This is the very core of
the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions
which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water

410

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a
window pane ? If not, why should the molecular
motion of the brain he yoked to this mysterious com-
panion — consciousness ? We can form a coherent
picture of all the purely physical processes — the stirring
of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves, the discharging
of the muscles, and all the subsequent motions of the
organism. We are here dealing with mechanical pro-
blems which are mentally presentable. But we can
form no picture of the process whereby consciousness
emerges, either as a necessary link, or as an accidental
by-product, of this series of actions. The reverse pro-
cess of the production of motion by consciousness is
equally unpresentable to the mind. We are here in
fact on the boundary line of the intellect, where the
ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us. If
we are true to these canons, we must deny to sub-
jective phenomena all influence on physical processes.
The mechanical philosopher, as such, will never place
a state of consciousness and a group of molecules
in the relation of mover and moved. Observation
proves them to interact ; but, in passing from the one
to the other, we meet a blank which the logic of deduc-
tion is unable to fill. This, the reader will remember, is
the conclusion at which I had arrived more than twenty
years ago. I lay bare unsparingly the central difficulty
of the materialist, and tell him that the facts of observa-
tion which he considers so simple are 4 almost as diffi-
cult to be seized mentally as the idea of a soul.’ I go
further, and say, in effect, to those who wish to retain
this idea, ‘ If you abandon the interpretations of grosser
minds, who image the soul as a Psyche which could
be thrown out of the window — an entity which is
usually occupied, we know not how, among the molecules
of the brain, but which on due occasion, such as the

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 411

intrusion of a bullet or the blow of a club, can fly away
into other regions of space — if, abandoning this heathen
notion, you consent to approach the subject in the only
way in which approach is possible — if you consent to
make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon
which, as I have taken more pains than anybody else to
show you, refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws —
then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of
ideality.’ I say it strongly, but with good temper, that
the theologian, or the defender of theology, who hacks
and scourges me for putting the question in this light
is guilty of black ingratitude.

Notwithstanding the agreement thus far pointed out,
there are certain points in Professor Virchow’s lecture
to which I should feel inclined to take exception. I
think it was hardly necessary to associate the theory
of evolution with Socialism ; it may be even questioned
whether it was correct to do so. As Lange remarks,
the aim of Socialism, or of its extreme leaders, is to
overthrow the existing systems of government, and any-
thing that helps them to this end is welcomed, whether
it be atheism or papal infallibility. For long years the
Socialists saw Church and State united against them,
and both were therefore regarded with a common
hatred. But no sooner does a serious difference arise
between Church and State, than a portion of the
Socialists begin immediately to dally with the former.1
The experience of the last Gferman elections illustrates
Lange’s position. Far nobler and truer to my mind
than this fear of promoting Socialism by a scientific
theory which the best and soberest heads in the world
have substantially accepted, is the position assumed
by Helmholtz, who in his 4 Popular Lectures ’ describes

1 ‘Geschichte des Materialismus,’ 2° Auflage, vol. ii. p. 538.

412

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Darwin’s theory as embracing ‘an essentially new creative
thought’ (einen wesentlich neuen schopferischen Gedan-
ken), and who illustrates the greatness of this thought by
copious references to tbe solutions, previously undreamt
of, which it offers of the enigmas of life and organisa-
tion. He points to the clouds of error and confusion
which it has already dispersed, and shows how the
progress of discovery since its first enunciation is
simply a record of the approach of the theory towards
complete demonstration. One point in this ‘ popular ’
exposition deserves especial mention here. Helmholtz
refers to the dominant position acquired by Germany in
physiology and medicine, while other nations have kept
abreast of her in the investigation of inorganic nature.
He claims for German men the credit of pursuing with
unflagging and self-denying industry, with purely
ideal aims, and without any immediate prospect of
practical utility, the cultivation of pure science. But
that which has determined German superiority in the
fields referred to was, in his opinion, something different
from this. Enquiries into the nature of life are
intimately connected with psychological and ethical
questions ; and he claims for his countrymen a greater
fearlessness of the consequences which a full knowledge
of the truth may here carry along with it, than reigns
among the enquirers of other nations. And why is this
the case ? ‘ England and France,’ he says, ‘ possess

distinguished investigators — men competent to follow
up and illustrate with vigorous energy the methods of
natural science ; but they have hitherto been compelled
to bend before social and theological prejudices, and
could only utter their convictions under the penalty of
injuring their social influence and usefulness. Germany
has gone forward more courageously. She has cherished
the trust, which has never been deceived, that com-

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 413

plete truth carries with it the antidote against the bane
and danger which follow in the train of half know-
ledge. A cheerfully laborious and temperate people
— a people morally strong — can well afford to look
truth full in the face. Nor are they to be ruined by the
enunciation of one-sided theories, even when these may
appear to threaten the bases of society.’ These words
of Helmholtz are, in my opinion, wiser and more applic-
able to the condition of Germany at the present moment
than those which express the fears of Professor Virchow.
It will be remembered that at the time of his lecture
his chief anxieties were directed towards France ; but
France has since that time given ample evidence of her
ability to crush, not only Socialists, but anti-Socialists,
who would impose on her a yoke which she refuses to bear.

In close connection with these utterances of Helm-
holtz, I place another utterance not less noble, which
I trust was understood and appreciated by those to
whom it was addressed. 4 If,’ said the President of the
British Association in his opening address in Dublin,
4 we could lay down beforehand the precise limits of
possible knowledge, the problem of physical science
would be already half solved. But the question to
which the scientific explorer has often to address him-
self is, not merely whether he is able to solve this or
that problem ; but whether he can so far unravel the
tangled threads of the matter with which he has to
deal, as to weave them into a definite problem at
all. ... If his eye seem dim, he must look steadfastly
and with hope into the misty vision, until the very
clouds wreathe themselves into definite forms. If his
ear seem dull, he must listen patiently and with sym-
pathetic trust to the intricate whisperings of Nature —
the goddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices
— until here and there he can pick out a few simple

414

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

notes to which his own powers can resound. If, then,
at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle
from which he is called upon to take a perspective
survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he
can see from his vantage ground ; if at such a moment
after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon,
and after describing the most distant of well-defined
objects, he should give utterance also to some of the
subjective impressions which he is conscious of receiving
from regions beyond ; if he should depict possibilities
which seem opening to his view ; if he should explain
why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an open
path ; then the fault and the loss would be alike "ours
if ive refused to listen calmly , and temperately to
form our own judgment on what we hear; then
assuredly it is we who would be committing the error
of confounding matters of fact with matters of
opinion , if we failed to discriminate betuieen the
various elements contained in such a discourse , and as-
sumed that they had been all put on the same footing'

While largely agreeing with him, I cannot
quite accept the setting in which Professor Virchow
places the confessedly abortive attempts to secure
an experimental basis for the doctrine of spon-
taneous generation. It is not a doctrine ‘ so dis-
credited ’ that some of the scientific thinkers of England
accept 4 as the basis of all their views of life.’ Their
induction is by no means thus limited. They have on
their side more than the 4 reasonable probability'5
deemed sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical
guidance in the gravest affairs, that the members of
the solar system which are now discrete once formed a
continuous mass ; that in the course of untold ages,
during which the work of condensation, through the waste

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 415

of heat in space, went on, the planets were detached ;
and that our present sun is the residual nucleus of the
floccident or gaseous ball from which the planets were
successively separated. Life, as we define it, was not
possible for aeons subsequent to this separation. "W hen
and how did it appear ? I have already pressed this
question, hut have received no answer.1 If, with Pro-
fessor Knight, we regard the Bible account of the
introduction of life upon the earth as a poem, not as a
statement of fact, where are we to seek for guidance as
to the fact ? There does not exist a barrier possessing
the strength of a cobweb to oppose to the hypothesis
which ascribes the appearance of life to that 4 potency
of matter ’ which finds expression in natural evolution.2
This hypothesis is not without its difficulties, but they
vanish when compared with those which encumber its
rivals. There are various facts in science obviously
connected, and whose connections we are unable to
trace ; but we do not think of filling the gap between
them by the intrusion of a separable spiritual agent.
In like manner though we are unable to trace the
course of things from the nebula, when there was no
life in our sense, to the present earth where life abounds,
the spirit and practice of science pronounce against the
intrusion of an anthropomorphic creator. Theologians
must liberate and refine their conceptions or be pre-
pared for the rejection of them by thoughtful minds.
It is they, not we, who lay claim to knowledge never
given to man. Our refusal of the creative hypothesis
is less an assertion of knowledge than a protest against

1 In the ‘Apology for the Belfast Address,’ the question is
reasoned out.

2 ‘We feel it an undeniable necessity,’ says Professor Virchow,
‘ not to sever the organic world from the whole, as if it were some-
thing disjoined from the whole.’ This grave statement cannot be
weakened by the subsequent pleasantry regarding ‘ Carbon & Co.’

416 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the assumption of knowledge which must long, if not
always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a source
of perpetual confusion.’ At the same time, when I look
with strenuous gaze into the whole problem as far as my
capacities allow, overwhelming wonder is the predomi-
nant feeling. Tins wonder has come to me from the
ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an
equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning
your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you place, with
Job, your forehead in the dust and acknowledge the
authorship of this universe to be past finding out — if,
having made this confession, and relinquished the views
of the mechanical theologian, you desire for the satis-
faction of feelings which I admit to be, in great part,
those of humanity at large, to give ideal form to the
Power that moves all things — it is not by me that you
will find objections raised to this exercise of ideality,
if it be only consciously and worthily carried out.

Again, I think Professor Virchow’s position, in re-
gard to the question of contagium animatum, is not
altogether that of true philosophy. He points to the
antiquity of the doctrine. ‘ It is lost,’ he says, ‘ in the
darkness of the middle ages. We have received this
name from our forefathers, and it already appears dis-
tinctly in the sixteenth century. We possess several
works of that time which put forward contagium ani-
mutum as a scientific doctrine, with the same confidence,
with the same sort of proof, with which the “ Plastidulic
soul ” is now set forth.’

These speculations of our ‘ forefathers ’ will appeal
differently to different minds. By some they will be
dismissed with a sneer ; to others they will appeal as
proofs of genius on the part of those who enunciated
them. There are men, and by no means the minority,

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 417

who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never
rise into the region of principles ; and they are some-
times intolerant of those who can. They are formed to
plod meritoriously on the lower levels of thought, un-
possessed of the pinions necessary to reach the heights.

Thev cannot realise the mental act — the act of in-

%/

spiration it might well be called — by which a man of
genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a
theoretic conception which unravels and illuminates the
tangle of centuries of observation and experiment.
There are minds, it may be said in passing, who
at the present moment stand in this relation to Mr.
Darwin. For my part, I should be inclined to ascribe
to penetration rather than to presumption the notion
of a contagium animatum. He who invented the
term ought, I think, to be held in esteem ; for he had
before him the quantity of fact, and the measure of
analogy, that would justify a man of genius in taking a
step so bold. ‘ Nevertheless,’ says Professor Virchow, ‘ no
one was able throughout a long time to discover these
living germs of disease. The sixteenth century did not
find them, nor did the seventeenth, nor the eighteenth.’
But it may be urged, in reply to this, that the theoretic
conjecture often legitimately comes first. It is the
forecast of genius which anticipates the fact and con-
stitutes a spur towards its discovery. If, instead of
being a spur, the theoretic guess rendered men content
with imperfect knowledge, it would be a thing to be
deprecated. But in modern investigation this is dis-
tinctly not the case ; Darwin’s theory, for example, like
the undulatory theory, has been a motive power and not
an anodyne. ‘ At last,’ continues Professor Virchow, 4 in
the nineteenth century we have begun little by little really
to find contagia animata .’ So much the more honour, I
infer, is due to those who. three centuries in advance, so

VOL. II. E E

418

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

put together the facts and analogies of contagious disease
as to divine its root and character. Professor Virchow
seems to deprecate the 4 obstinacy ’ with which this
notion of a contagium vivum emerged. Here I should
not be inclined to follow him ; because I do not know, nor
does he tell me, how much the discovery of facts in the
nineteenth century is indebted to the stimulus derived
from the theoretic discussions of preceding centuries.
The genesis of scientific ideas is a subject of profound
interest and importance. Pie would be but a poor phi-
losopher who would sever modern chemistry from the
efforts of the alchemists, who would detach modern
atomic doctrines from the speculations of Lucretius and
his predecessors, or who would claim for our present
knowledge of contagia an origin altogether independent
of the efforts of our 4 forefathers ’ to penetrate this
enigma.

Finally, I do not know that I should agree with
Professor Virchow as to what a theory is or ought to be.
I call a theory a principle or conception of the mind
which accounts for observed facts, and which helps us
to look for and predict facts not yet observed. Every
new discovery which fits into a theory strengthens it.
The theory is not a thing complete from the first, but
a thing which grows, as it were asymptotically, to-
wards certainty. Darwin’s theory, as pointed out nine
and ten years ago by Helmholtz and Hooker, was then
exactly in this condition of growth ; and had they to
speak of the subject to-day they would be able to
announce an enormous strengthening of the theoretic
fibre. Fissures in continuity which then existed, and
which left little hope of being ever spanned, have
been since filled in, so that the further the theory is
tested the more fully does it harmonise with progressive

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 419

experience and discovery. We shall probably never fill
all the gaps ; but this will not prevent a profound belief
in the truth of the theory from taking root in the
general mind. Much less will it justify a total denial
of the theory. The man of science who assumes in
such a case the position of a denier is sure to be stranded
and isolated. The proper attitude, in my opinion, is to
give to the theory during the phases of its growth as
nearly as possible a ‘proportionate assent ; and, if it be a
theory which influences practice, our wisdom is to follow
its probable suggestions where more than probability is
for the moment unattainable. I write thus with the
theory of contagium vivum more especially in my
mind, and must regret the attitude of denial assumed
by Professor Virchow towards that theory. ‘ I must beg
my friend Klebs to pardon me,’ he says, ‘ if, notwith-
standing the late advances made by the doctrine of
infectious fungi, I still persist in my reserve so far as
to admit only the fungus which is really pioved, while I
deny all other fungi so long as they are not actually
brought before me.’ Professor Virchow, that is to say,
will continue to deny the Grerm Theory, however great
the probabilities on its side, however numerous be the
cases of which it renders a just account, until it has
ceased to be a theory at all, and has become a congeries
of sensible facts. Had he said, ‘ As long as a single
fungus of disease remains to be discovered, it is your
bounden duty to search for it,’ I should cordially agree
with him. But by his unreserved denial he quenches
the light of probability which ought to guide the
practice of the medical man. Both here and in relation
to the theory of evolution excess upon one side has
begotten excess upon the other.

K H 2

420

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

Note. — As might have been expected, Professor Virchow shows
himself in practice far too sound a philosopher to be restricted by
the canon laid down in his critique of Dr. Haeckel. In his recent
discourse upon the plague, he asks and answers the question, ‘What
is the contagium?’ in the following words: — ‘Et qu’est-ce que
le contagium ? A mon avis, l’analogie de la peste avec le charbon
contagieux me paralt si grande qu’il me semble possible de trouver
un organisme microscopique qui contient le germe de l’affection.
Mais jusqu'A, present on a peu cherche & trouver cet organisme.’ —
Itevue Sciontifique, March, 1879.

421

XVI.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT }

HE subject of this evening’s discourse was proposed

by our late honorary secretary.2 That word
‘ late ’ lias for me its own connotations. It implies,
among other things, the loss of a comrade by whose
side I have worked for thirteen years. On the other
hand, regret is not without its opposite in the feeling
with which I have seen him rise by sheer intrinsic
merit, moral and intellectual, to the highest official
position which it is in the power of English science to
bestow. Well, he, whose constant desire and practice
were to promote the interests and extend the usefulness
of this institution, thought that at a time when the
electric light occupied so much of public attention, a
few sound notions regarding it, on the more purely
scientific side, might, to use his owu pithy expression,
be ‘ planted ’ in the public mind. I am here to-night
with the view of trying, to the best of my ability, to
realise the idea of our iriend.

In the year 1800, Volta announced his immortal
discovery of the pile. Whetted to eagerness by the
previous conflict between him and Galvani, the scientific
men of the age flung themselves with ardour upon the
new discovery, repeating Volta’s experiments, and ex-
tending them in many ways. The light and heat of

1 A discourse delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain
on Friday, January 17, 1879, and introduced here as the latest
Fragment.

2 Mr. William Spottiswoode, now President of the Royal Society

422

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the voltaic circuit attracted marked attention, and in
the innumerable tests and trials to which this question
was subjected, the utility of platinum and charcoal as
means of exalting the light was on all hands recognised.
Mr. Children, with a battery surpassing in strength all
its predecessors, fused platinum wires eighteen inches
long, while 6 points of charcoal produced a light so
vivid that the sunshine, compared with it, appeared
feeble.’ 1 Such effects reached their culmination when,
in 1808, through the liberality of a few members of
the Royal Institution, Davy was enabled to construct a
battery of two thousand pairs of plates, with which he
afterwards obtained calorific and luminous effects far
transcending anything previously observed. The arc
of flame between the carbon terminals was four inches
long, and by its heat quartz, sapphire, magnesia, and
lime, were melted like wax in a candle flame ; while
fragments of diamond and plumbago rapidly disappeared
as if reduced to vapour.2

The first condition to be fulfilled in the develop-
ment of heat and light by the electric current is that
it shall encounter and overcome resistance. Flowing
through a perfect conductor, no matter what the
strength of the current might be, neither heat nor light
could be developed. A rod of unresisting copper
carries away uninjured and im warmed an atmospheric
discharge competent to shiver to splinters a resisting

1 Davy, ‘ Chemical Philosophy,’ p. 110.

2 In the concluding lecture at the Royal Institution in June,
1810, Davy showed the action of this battery. He then fused
iridium, the alloy of iridium and osmium, and other refractory sub-
stances. ‘ Philosophical Magazine,’ vol. xxxv. p. 463. Quetelet
assigns the first production of the spark between coal-points to
Curtet in 1802. Davy certainly in that year showed the carbon
light with a battery of 160 pairs of plates in the theatre of the
Royal Institution ( * Jour. Roy. Inst. ’ vol. i. p. 166).

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

423

oak. I send the self-same current through a wire
composed of alternate lengths of silver and platinum.
The silver offers little resistance, the platinum offers
much. The consequence is that the platinum is raised
to a white heat, while the silver is not visibly warmed.
The same holds good with regard to the carbon ter-
minals employed for the production ol the electric
light. The interval between them offers a powerful
resistance to the passage of the current, and it is by
the gathering up of the force necessary to burst across
this interval that the voltaic current is able to throw
the carbon into that state of violent intestine commo-
tion which we call heat, and to which its effulgence is
due. The smallest interval of air usually suffices to
stop the current. But when the carbon points are first
brought together and then separated, there occurs be-
tween them a discharge of incandescent matter which
carries, or may carry, the current over a considerable
space. The light comes almost wholly from the in-
candescent carbons. The space between them is filled
with a blue flame which, being usually bent by the
earth’s magnetism, receives the name of the Voltaic
Arc.1

1 The part played by resistance is strikingly illustrated by the
deportment of silver and thallium when mixed together and volati-
lised in the arc. The current first selects as its carrier the most
volatile metal, which in this case is thallium. While it continues
abundant, the passage of the current is so free — the resistance to it
is so small — that the heat generated is incompetent to volatilise
the silver. As the thallium disappears the current is forced to con-
centrate its power ; it presses the silver into its service, and finally
fills the space between the carbons with a vapour which, as long as
the necessary resistance is absent, it is incompetent to produce. I
have on a former occasion drawn attention to a danger which besets
the spectroscopist when operating upon a mixture of constituents
volatile in different degrees. When, in 1872, I first observed the
effect here described, had I not known that silver was present, I
should have inferred its absence.

424

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

For seventy years, then, we have been in possession
of this transcendent light without applying it to the
illumination of our streets and houses. Such applica-
tions suggested themselves at the outset, but there were
grave difficulties in their way. The first difficulty
arose from the waste of the carbons, which are dissi-
pated in part by ordinary combustion, and in part by
the electric transfer of matter from the one carbon to
the other. To keep the carbons at the proper distance
asunder regulators were devised, the earliest, I believe,
by Staite, and the most successful by Duboscq, Foucault,
and Serrin, who have been succeeded by Holmes,
Siemens, Browning, Carre, Gramme, Lontin, and others.
By such arrangements the first difficulty was practi-
cally overcome ; but the second, a graver one, is pro-
bably inseparable from the construction of the voltaic
battery. It arises from the operation of that inexorable
law which throughout the material universe demands
an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, refusing to
yield the faintest glow of heat or glimmer of light
without the expenditure of an absolutely equal quantity
of some other power. Hence, in practice, the desirabi-
lity of any transformation must depend upon the value
of the product in relation to that of the power expended.
The metal zinc can be burnt like paper ; it might be
ignited in a flame, but it is possible to avoid the intro-
duction of all foreign heat and to burn the zinc in air
of the temperature of this room. This is done by
placing zinc foil at the focus of a concave mirror, which
concentrates to a point the divergent electric beam,
but which does not warm the air. The zinc burns at
the focus with a violet flame, and we could readily
determine the amount of heat generated by its com-
bustion. But zinc can be burnt not only in air but in
liquids. It is thus burnt when acidulated water is

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

425

poured over it ; it is also thus burnt in the voltaic
battery. Here, however, to obtain the oxygen necessary
for its combustion, the zinc has to dislodge the hydrogen
with which the oxygen is combined. The consequence
is that the heat due to the combustion of the metal in
the liquid falls short of that developed by its combustion
in air, by the exact quantity necessary to separate the
oxygen from the hydrogen. Fully four-fifths of the
total heat are used up in this molecular work, only one-
fifth remaining to warm the battery. It is upon this
residue that we must now fix our attention, for it is
solely out of it that we manufacture our electric light.

Before you are two small voltaic batteries of ten
cells each. The two ends of one of them are united by
a thick copper wire, while into the circuit of the other
a thin platinum wire is introduced. The platinum
glows with a white heat, while the copper wire is not
sensibly warmed. Now an ounce of zinc, like an ounce
of coal, produces by its complete combustion in air a
constant quantity of heat. The total heat developed
by an ounce of zinc through its union with oxygen in
the battery is also absolutely invariable. Let our two
batteries, then, continue in action until an ounce of
zinc in each of them is consumed. In the one case the
heat generated is purely domestic, being liberated on
the hearth where the fuel is burnt, that is to sa}r in the
cells of the battery itself. In the other case, the heat
is in part domestic and in part foreign — in part within
the battery and in part outside. One of the funda-
mental truths to be borne in mind is that the sum of
the foreign and 'domestic — of the external and internal
— heats is fixed and invariable. Hence, to have heat
outside, you must draw upon the heat within. These
remarks apply to the electric light. By the inter-
mediation of the electric current the moderate warmth

426

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

of the battery is not only carried away, but concen-
trated, so as to produce, at any distance from its origin,
a heat next in order to that of the sun. The current
might therefore be defined as the swift carrier of heat.
Loading itself here with invisible power, by a process
of transmutation which outstrips the dreams of the
alchemist, it can discharge its load, in the fraction of a
second, as light and heat, at the opposite side of the
world.

Thus, the light and heat produced outside the bat-
tery are derived from the metallic fuel burnt within
the battery ; and, as zinc happens to be an expensive
fuel, though we have possessed the electric light for
more than seventy years, it has been too costly to come
into general use. But within these walls, in the
autumn of 1831, Faraday discovered a new source of
electricity, which we have now to investigate. On the
table before me lies a coil of covered copper wire, with
its ends disunited. I lift one side of the coil from the
table, and in doing so exert the muscular effort neces-
sary to overcome the simple weight of the coil. I unite
its two ends and repeat the experiment. The effort
now required, if accurately measured, would be found
greater than before. In lifting the coil I cut the lines
of the earth’s magnetic force, such cutting, as proved
by Faraday, being always accompanied, in a closed con-
ductor, by the production of an ‘ induced ’ electric
current which, as long as the ends of the coil remained
separate, had no circuit through which it could pass.
The current here evoked subsides immediately as heat ;
this heat being the exact equivalent of the excess of
effort just referred to as over and above that necessary
to overcome the simple weight of the coil. "W hen the
coil is liberated it falls back to the table, and when its
ends are united it encounters a resistance over and

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

427

above that of the air. It generates an electric current
opposed in direction to the first, and reaches the table
with a diminished shock. The amount of the diminu-
tion is accurately represented by the warmth which the
momentary current developes in the coil. "V arious
devices were employed to exalt these induced currents,
among which the instruments of Pixii, Clarke, and
Saxton were long conspicuous. Faraday, indeed, fore-
saw that such attempts were sure to be made ; but he
chose to leave them in the hands of the mechanician,
while he himself pursued the deeper study of facts and
principles. ‘I have rather,’ he writes in 1831, ‘been
desirous of discovering new facts and new relations
dependent on magneto-electric induction, than of
exalting the force of those already obtained ; being
assured that the latter would find their full development
hereafter.’

For more than twenty years magneto-electricity
had subserved its first and noblest purpose of augment-
ing our knowledge of the powers of nature. It had
been discovered and applied to intellectual ends, its
application to practical ends being still unrealised.
The Drummond light had raised thoughts and hopes of
vast improvements in public illumination. Many in-
ventors tried to obtain it cheaply; and in 1853 an
attempt was made to organise a company in Paris for
the purpose of procuring, through the decomposition of
water by a powerful magneto-electric machine con-
structed by M. Nollet, the oxygen and hydrogen neces-
sary for the lime light. The experiment failed, but
the apparatus by which it was attempted suggested to
Mr. Holmes other and more hopeful applications.
Abandoning the attempt to produce the lime light,
with persevering skill Holmes continued to improve
the apparatus and to augment its power, until it was

428

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

finally able to yield a magneto-electric light comparable
to that of the voltaic battery. Judged by later know-
ledge, this first machine would be considered cumbrous
and defective in the extreme ; but judged by the light
of antecedent events, it marked a great step forward.

Faraday was profoundly interested in the growth of
his own discovery. The Elder Brethren of the Trinity
House had had the wisdom to make him their ‘Scientific
Adviser ; ’ and it is interesting to notice in his reports
regarding the light, the mixture of enthusiasm and
caution which characterised him. Enthusiasm was
with him a motive power, guided and controlled by a
disciplined judgment. He rode it as a charger, holding
it in by a strong rein. While dealing with Holmes, he
states the case of the light pro and con. He checks
the ardour of the inventor, and, as regards cost, rejecting
sanguine estimates, he insists over and over again on
the necessity of continued experiment for the solution
of this important question. His matured opinion was,
however, strongly in favour of the light. With reference
to an experiment made at the South Foreland on the
20th of April, 1859, he thus expresses himself: — ‘The
beauty of the light was wonderful. At a mile off, the
apparent streams of light issuing from the lantern were
twice as long as those from the lower lighthouse, and
apparently three or four times as bright. The hori-
zontal plane in which they chiefly took their w'ay made
all above or below it black. The tops of the hills, the
churches, and the houses illuminated by it were striking
in their effect upon the eye.’ Further on in his report
he expresses himself thus : — ‘ In fulfilment of this part
of my duty, I beg to state that, in my opinion, Professor
Holmes has practically established the fitness and
sufficiency of the magneto-electric light for lighthouse
purposes, so far as its nature and management are con-

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

429

cerned. The light produced is powerful beyond any
other that I have yet seen so applied, and in principle
may be accumulated to any degree ; its regularity in
the lantern is great ; its management easy, and its care
there may be confided to attentive keepers of the
ordinary degree of intellect and knowledge.’ Finally,
as regards the conduct of Professor Holmes during these
memorable experiments, it is only fair to add the
following remark with which Faraday closes the report
submitted to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House
on the 29th of April, 1859 : — 4 1 must bear my testi-
mony,’ he says, 4 to the perfect openness, candour, and
honour of Professor Holmes. He has answered every
question, concealed no weak point, explained every
applied principle, given every reason for a change either
in this or that direction, during several periods of close
questioning, in a manner that was very agreeable to me,
whose duty it was to search for real faults or possible
objections, in respect both of the present time and the
future.’ 1

Soon afterwards the Elder Brethren of the Trinity
House had the intelligent courage to establish the
machines of Holmes permanently at Dungeness, where
the magneto-electric light continued to shine for many
years.

The magneto-electric machine of the Alliance
Company soon succeeded to that of Holmes, being in
various ways a very marked improvement on the latter.
Its currents were stronger and its light was brighter than
those of its pi-edecessor. In it, moreover, the com-
mutator, the flashing and destruction of which were
sources of irregularity and deterioration in the machine
of Holmes, was, at the suggestion of M. Masson,2

1 Holmes’s first, offer of his machine to the Trinity House bears
date February 2, 1857.

2 Du Moncel, ‘ l’Electricitg’ August, 1878, p. 150.

430

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

entirely abandoned ; alternating currents instead of the
direct current being employed. M. Serrin modified his
excellent lamp with the express view of enabling it to
cope with alternating currents. During the Interna-
tional Exhibition of 1862, where the machine was shown,
M. Berlioz offered to dispose of the invention to the
Elder Brethren of the Trinity House. They referred
the matter to Faraday, and he replied as follows : — ‘ I
am not aware that the Trinity House authorities have
advanced so far as to be able to decide whether they
will require more magneto-electric machines, or whether,
if they should require them, they see reason to suppose
the means of their supply in this country, from the
source already open to them, would not be sufficient.
Therefore I do not see that at present they want to
purchase a machine.’ Faraday was obviously swayed by
the desire to protect the interests of Holmes, who had
borne the burden and heat which fall upon the pioneer.
The Alliance machines were introduced with success at
Cape la Heve, near Havre ; and the Elder Brethren of
the Trinity House, determined to have the best avail-
able apparatus, decided, in 1868, on the introduction of
machines on the Alliance principle into the lighthouses
at Souter Point and the South Foreland. These
machines were constructed by Professor Holmes, and
they still continue in operation. With regard, then, to
the application of electricity to lighthouse purposes, the
course of events was this : The Dungeness light was
introduced on January 31, 1862 ; the light at La Heve
on December 26, 1863, or nearly two years later. But
Faraday’s experimental trial at the South Foreland
preceded the lighting of Dungeness by more than two
years. The electric light was afterwards established at
Cape Grisnez. The light was started at Souter Point
on January 11, 1871 ; and at the South boreland on

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

431

January 1, 1872. At the Lizard, which enjoys the
newest and most powerful development of the electric
light, it began to shine on January 1, 1878.

I have now to revert to a point of apparently small
moment, but which really constitutes an important
step in the development of this subject. I refer to the
form given in 1857 to the rotating armature by Dr.
Werner Siemens, of Berlin. Instead of employing coils
wound transversely round cores of iron, as in the
machine of Saxton, Siemens, after giving a bar of iron
the proper shape, wound his wire longitudinally round
it, and obtained thereby greatly augmented effects
between suitably placed magnetic poles. Such an
armature is employed in the small magneto-electric
machine which I now introduce to your notice, and for
which the institution is indebted to Mr. Henry Wilde,
of Manchester. There are here sixteen permanent
horse-shoe magnets placed parallel to each other, and
between their poles a Siemens armature. The two
ends of the wire which surrounds the armature are now
disconnected. In turning the handle and causing the
armature to rotate, I simply overcome ordinary me-
chanical friction. But the two ends of the armature
coil can be united in a moment, and when this is done
I immediately experience a greatly increased resistance
to rotation. Something over and above the ordinary
friction of the machine is now to be overcome, and by
the expenditure of an additional amount of muscular
force I am able to overcome it. The excess of labour
thus thrown upon my arm has its exact equivalent in
the electric currents generated, and the heat produced
by their subsidence in the coil of the armature. A
portion of this heat may be rendered visible by con-
necting the two ends of the coil with a thin platinum

432

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

wire. When the handle of the machine is rapidly
turned the wire glows, first with a red heat, then with
a white heat, and finally with the heat of fusion. The
moment the wire melts, the circuit round the armature
is broken, an instant relief from the labour thrown upon
the arm being the consequence. Clearly realise the
equivalent of the heat here developed. During the
period of turning the machine a certain amount of
combustible substance was oxidised or burnt in the
muscles of my arm. Had it done no external work,
the matter consumed would have produced a de-
finite amount of heat. Now, the muscular heat actually
developed during the rotation of the machine fell short
of this definite amount, the missing heat being repro-
duced to the last fraction in the glowing platinum wire
and the other parts of the machine. Here, then, the
electric current intervenes between my muscles and the
generated heat, exactly as it did a moment ago between
the voltaic battery and its generated heat. The electric
current is to all intents and purposes a vehicle which
transports the heat both of muscle and battery to any
distance from the hearth where the fuel is consumed.
Not only is the current a messenger, but it is also an
intensifier of magical power. The temperature of
my arm is, in round numbers, 100° Falir., and it is
bv the intensification of this heat that one of the most
refractory of metals, which requires a heat of 3,600°
Fahr. to fuse it, has been reduced to the molten con-
dition.

Zinc, as I have said, is a fuel far too expensive to
permit of the electric light produced by its combustion
being used for the common purposes of life, and you
will readily perceive that the human muscles, or even
the muscles of a horse, would be more expensive still.
Here, however, we can employ the force of burning coal

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

433

to turn our machine, and it is this employment of our
cheapest fuel, rendered possible by Faraday’s discovery,
which opens out to us the prospect of being able to apply
the electric light to public use.

In 1866 a great step in the intensification of induced
currents, and the consequent augmentation of the
magneto-electric light, was taken by Mr. Henry Wilde.
It fell to my lot to report upon them to the Royal
Society, but before doing so I took the trouble of going
to Manchester to witness Mr. Wilde’s experiments.
He operated in this way : starting from a small machine
like that worked in your presence a moment ago, he
employed its current to excite an electro-magnet of a
peculiar shape, between whose poles rotated a Siemens
armature ; 1 from this armature currents were obtained
vastly stronger than those generated by the small
magneto-electric machine. These currents might have
been immediately employed to produce the electric
light ; but instead of this they were conducted round a
second electro-magnet of vast size, between whose poles
rotated a Siemens armature of corresponding dimensions.
Three armatures therefore were involved in this series
of operations : first, the armature of the small magneto-
electric machine ; secondly, the armature of the first
electro-magnet, which was of considerable size ; and,
thirdly, the armature of the second electro-magnet,
which was of vast dimensions. With the currents
drawn from this third armature, Mr. Wilde obtained
effects, both as regards heat and light, enormously
transcending those previously known.2

1 Page and Moigno had previously shown that the magneto-
electric current could produce powerful electro-magnets.

2 Mr. Wilde’s paper is published in the ‘ Philosophical Trans-
actions ‘ for 1867, p. 89. My opinion regarding Wilde’s machine
was briefly expressed in a report to the Elder Brethren of the

VOL. II. F F

434

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

But the discovery which, above all others, brought
the practical question to the front is now to be con-
sidered. On the 4th of February, 1867, a paper was
received by the Royal Society from Dr. William
Siemens bearing the title, ‘ On the Conversion of
Dynamic into Electrical Force without the use of
Permanent Magnetism.’1 On the 14th of February a
paper from Sir Charles Wheatstone was received, bear-
ing the title, £ On the Augmentation of the Power of a
Magnet by the reaction thereon of Currents induced by
the Magnet itself.’ Both papers, which dealt with the
same discovery, and which were illustrated by ex-
periments, were read upon the same night, viz. the 1 4th
of February. It would be difficult to find in the whole
field of science a more beautiful example of the inter-
action of natural forces than that set forth in these two
papers. You can hardly find a bit of iron — you can hardly
pick up an old horse-shoe, for example — that does not

Trinity House on May 17, 1866 : ‘It gives me pleasure to state that
the machine is exceedingly effective, and that it far transcends in
power all other apparatus of the kind.’

1 A paper on the same subject, by Dr. Werner Siemens, was read
on January 17, 1867, before the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In
a letter to ‘ Engineering,’ No. 622, p. 46, Mr. Robert Sabine states
that Professor Wheatstone’s machines were constructed by Mr. Stroll
in the months of July and August, 1866. I do not doubt Mr.
Sabine’s statement ; still it would be dangerous in the highest
degree to depart from the canon, in asserting which Faraday was
specially strenuous, that the date of a discovery is the date of its
publication. Towards the end of December, 1866, Mr. Alfred Yarley
also lodged a provisional specification (which, I believe, is a sealed
document) embodying the principles of the dynamo-electric machine,
but some years elapsed before he made anything public. His
brother, Mr. Cromwell Varley, when writing on this subject in 1867,
does not mention him (Proc. Roy. Soc., March 14, 1867). It prob-
ably marks a national trait, that sealed communications, though
allowed in France, have never been recognised by the scientific
societies of England.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

435

possess a trace of permanent magnetism ; and from such
a small beginning Siemens and Wheatstone have taught
us to rise by a series of interactions between magnet
and armature to a magnetic intensity previously un-
approached. Conceive the Siemens armature placed
between the poles of a suitable electro-magnet. Suppose
this latter to possess at starting the faintest trace of
magnetism ; when the armature rotates, currents of
infinitesimal strength are generated in its coil. Let
the ends of that coil be connected with the wire sur-
rounding the electro-magnet. The infinitesimal current
generated in the armature will then circulate round the
magnet, augmenting its intensity by an infinitesimal
amount. The strengthened magnet instantly reacts
upon the coil which feeds it, producing a current of
greater strength. This current again passes round the
magnet, which immediately brings its enhanced power
to bear upon the coil. By this play of mutual give and
take between magnet and armature, the strength of the
former is raised in a very brief interval from almost
nothing to complete magnetic saturation. Such a
magnet and armature are able to produce currents of
extraordinary power, and if an electric lamp be intro-
duced into the common circuit of magnet and armature,
we can readily obtain a most powerful light.1 By tin's
discovery, then, we are enabled to avoid the trouble and
expense involved in the employment of permanent
magnets ; we are also enabled to drop the exciting
magneto-electric machine, and the duplication of the
electro-magnets. By it, in short, the electric generator
is so far simplified, and reduced in cost, as to enable

1 In 1867 Mr. Ladd introduced the modification of dividing the
armature into two separate coils, one of which fed the electro-
magnets, while the other yielded the induced currents.

f F 2

436

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

electricity to enter the lists as the rival of our present
means of illumination.

Soon after the announcement of their discovery by
Siemens and Wheatstone, Mr. Holmes, at the instance
of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, endeavoured
to turn this discovery to account for lighthouse purposes.
Already, in the spring of 1869, he had constructed a
machine which, though hampered with defects, exhi-
bited extraordinary power. The light was developed
in the focus of a dioptric apparatus placed on the
Trinity Wharf at Blackwall, and witnessed by the Elder
Brethren, Mr. Douglass, and myself, from an observatory
at Charlton, on the opposite side of the Thames. Falling
upon the suspended haze, the light illuminated the
atmosphere for miles all round. Anything so sunlike
in splendour had not, I imagine, been previously
witnessed. The apparatus of Holmes, however, was
rapidly distanced by the safer and more powerful
machines of Siemens and Gramme.

As regards lighthouse illumination, the next step
forward was taken by the Elder Brethren of the Trinity
House in 1876-77. Having previously decided on the
establishment of the electric light at the Lizard in
Cornwall, they instituted, at the time referred to, an
elaborate series of comparative experiments wherein
the machines of Holmes, of the Alliance Company, of
Siemens, and of Gramme, were pitted against each
other. The Siemens and the Gramme machines
delivered direct currents, while those of Holmes
and the Alliance Company delivered alternating
currents. The light of the latter was of the same in-
tensity in all azimuths ; that of the former was
different in different azimuths, the discharge being
so regulated as to yield a gush of light of special
intensity in one direction. The following table gives

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

437

in standard candles the performance of the respective
machines : — 1

Name of Machines.
Holmes
Alliance

Gramme (No. 1) .
Gramme (No. 2) .
Siemens (Large)
Siemens (Small, No. 1)

Maximum.

Minimum.

1,523

1,523

1,953

1,953

6,663

4,016

6,663

4,016

14,818

8,932

5,539

3,339

6,864

4,138

2,811

2,811

Siemens (Small, No. 2)
Two Holmes’s coupled

Two Gramme’s (Nos. 1 and 2) 11,396 6,S69

Two Siemens’ (Nos. 1 and 2) 14,131 8,520

These determinations were made with extreme care
and accuracy by Mr. Douglass, the engineer-in-chief,
and Mr. Ayres, the assistant engineer of the Trinity
House. It is practically impossible to compare photo-
metrically and directly the flame of the candle with
these sun-like lights. A light of intermediate intensity
— that of the six-wick Trinity oil lamp — was therefore
in the first instance compared with the electric light.
The candle power of the oil lamp being afterwards
determined, the intensity of the electric light became
known. The numbers given in the table prove the
superiority of the Alliance machine over that of Holmes.
They prove the great superiority both of the Gramme
machine and of the small Siemens machine over
the Alliance. The large Siemens machine is ’ shown to
yield a light far exceeding all the others, while the

1 Observations from the sea on the night of November 21, 1876,
made the Gramme and small Siemens practically equal to the
Alliance. But the photometric observations, in which the external
resistance was abolished, and previous to which the light-keepers
had become more skilled in the management of the direct current,
showed the differences recorded in the table. A close inspection
of these powerful lights at the South Foreland caused my face to
peel, as if it had been irritated by an Alpine sun.

438

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

coupling of two Grammes, or of two Siemens together,
here effected for the first time, was followed by a very
great augmentation of the light, rising in the one case
from 6663 candles to 1 1 ,396, and in the other case from
6864 candles to 14,134. Where the arc is single and
the external resistance small, great advantages attach to
the Siemens light. After this contest, which was con-
ducted throughout in the most amicable manner, Siemens
machines of type No. 2 were chosen for the Lizard.1

We have machines capable of sustaining a single
light, and also machines capable of sustaining several
lights. The Gramme machine, for example, which
ignites the Jablochkoff candles on the Thames Embank-
ment and at the Holborn Viaduct, delivers four currents,
each passing through its own circuit. In each circuit
are five lamps through which the current belonging to
the circuit passes in succession. The lights correspond
to so many resisting spaces, over which, as already ex-
plained, the current has to leap ; the force which
accomplishes the leap being that which produces the
light. Whether the current is to be competent to pass
through five lamps in succession, or to sustain only a
single lamp, depends entirely upon the will and skill of
the maker of the machine. He has, to guide him,
definite laws laid down by Ohm half a century ago, by
which he must abide.

Ohm has taught us how to arrange the elements of a
Voltaic battery so as to augment indefinitely its electro-
motive force — that force, namely, which urges the
current forward and enables it to surmount external
obstacles. We have only to link the cells together so
that the current generated by each cell shall pass

1 As the result of a recent trial by Mr. Schwendler, they have
been also chosen for India.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

439

through all the others, and add its electro-motive force
to that of all the others. We increase, it is true, at the
same time the resistance of the battery, diminishing
thereby the quantity of the current from each cell, but
we augment the power of the integrated current to
overcome external hindrances. The resistance of the
battery itself may, indeed, be rendered so great, that
the external resistance shall vanish in comparison.
What is here said regarding the voltaic battery is
equally true of magneto-electric machines. If we wish
our current to leap over five intervals, and produce five
lights in succession, we must invoke a sufficient electro-
motive force. This is done through multiplying, by the
use of thin wires, the convolutions of the rotating arma-
ture as, a moment ago, we augmented the cells of our
voltaic battery. Each additional convolution, like each
additional cell, adds its electro-motive force to that of
all the others ; and though it also adds its resistance,
thereby diminishing the quantity of current contributed
by each convolution, the integrated current becomes
endowed with the power of leaping across the successive
spaces necessary for the production of a series of lights
in its course. The current is, as it were, rendered at
once thinner and more piercing by the simultaneous
addition of internal resistance and electro-motive power.
The machines, on the other hand, which produce only a
single light have a small internal resistance associated
with a small electro-motive force. In such machines the
wire of the rotating armature is comparatively short and
thick, copper riband instead of wire being commonly
employed. Such machines deliver a large quantity of
electricity of low tension — in other words, of low leaping
power. Hence, though competent when their power is
converged, upon a single interval, to produce one
splendid light, their currents are unable to force a

440

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

passage when the number of intervals is increased.
Thus, by augmenting the convolutions of our machines
we sacrifice quantity and gain electro-motive force ;
while by lessening the number of the convolutions,
we sacrifice electro-motive force and gain quantity.
Whether we ought to choose the one form of machine
or the other depends entirely upon the external work
the machine has to perform. If the object be to obtain
a single light of great splendour, machines of low re-
sistance and large quantity must be employed. If we
want to obtain in the same circuit several lights of
moderate intensity, machines of high internal resistance
and of correspondingly high electro-motive power must
be invoked.

When a coil of covered wire surrounds a bar of iron,
the two ends of the coil being connected together, every
alteration of the magnetism of the bar is accompanied
by the development of an induced current in the coil.
The current is only excited during the period of mag-
netic change. No matter how strong or how weak the
magnetism of the bar may be, as long as its condition
remains permanent no current is developed. Conceive,
then, the pole of a magnet placed near one end of
the bar to be moved along it towards the other end.
During the time of the pole’s motion there will be an
incessant change in the magnetism of the bar, and
accompanying this change we shall have an induced
current in the surrounding coil. If, instead of moving
the magnet, we move the bar and its surrounding coil
past the magnetic pole, a similar alteration of the mag-
netism of the bar will occur, and a similar current will
be induced in the coil. You have here the fundamental
conception which led M. Grramme to the construction
of his beautiful machine.1 He aimed at giving con-

1 ‘Comptes Rendus,’ 1871, p. 176. See also Gaugain on the
Gramme machine, ‘Ann. de Chem. et de Phys., vol. xxviii. p. 321

THE ELECTEIC LIGHT.

441

tinuous motion to such a bar as we have here described ;
and for this purpose he bent it into a continuous ring,
which, by a suitable mechanism, he caused to rotate
rapidly close to the poles of a horse-shoe magnet. The
direction of the current varied with the motion and
with the character of the influencing pole. The result
was that the currents in the two semicircles of the coil
surrounding the ring flowed in opposite directions.
But it was easy, by the mechanical arrangement called
a commutator, to gather up the currents and cause
them to flow in the same direction. The first machines
of Gframme, therefore, furnished direct currents, simi-
lar to those yielded by the voltaic pile. M. Gframme
subsequently so modified his machine as to produce
alternating currents. Such alternating machines are
employed to produce the lights now exhibited on the
Holborn Viaduct and the Thames Embankment.

Another machine of great alleged merit is that of
M. Lontin. It resembles in shape a toothed iron
wheel, the teeth being used as cores, round which are
wound coils of copper wire. The wheel is caused to
rotate between the opposite poles of powerful electro-
magnets. On passing each pole the core or tooth is
strongly magnetised, and instantly evokes in its
surrounding coil an induced current of corresponding
strength. The currents excited in approaching to and
retreating from a pole, and in passing different poles, move
in opposite directions, but by means of a commutator these
conflicting electric streams are gathered up and caused
to flow in a common bed. The bobbins, in which the
currents are induced, can be so increased in number
as to augment indefinitely the power of the machine.
To excite his electro-magnets, M. Lontin applies the
principle of Mr. Wilde. A small machine furnishes a
direct current, which is carried round the electro-mag-

442

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

nets of a second and larger machine. Wilde’s prin-
ciple, it may be added, is also applied on the Thames
Embankment and the ITolborn Viaduct; a small
Gramme machine being used in each case to excite the
electro-magnets of the large one.

The Farmer- Wallace machine is also an apparatus
of great power. It consists of a combination of bobbins
for induced currents, and of inducing electro-magnets
the latter being excited by the method discovered by
Siemens and Wheatstone. In the machines intended
for the production of the electric light, the electro-
motive force is so great as to permit of the introduction
of several lights in the same circuit. A peculiarly
novel feature of the Farmer-Wallace system is the shape
of the carbons. Instead of rods, two large plates of
carbons with bevelled edges are employed, one above
the other. The electric discharge passes from edge to
edge, and shifts its position according as the carbon is
dissipated. The duration of the light in this case far
exceeds that obtainable with rods. I have myself seen
four of these lights in the same circuit in Mr. Ladd’s
workshop in the City, and they are now, I believe,
employed at the Liverpool Street Station of the Metro-
politan Kailway. The Farmer-Wallace ‘ quantity
machine ’ pours forth a flood of electricity of low
tension. It is unable to cross the interval necessary for
the production of the electric light, but it can fuse
thick copper wires. When sent through a short bar of
iridium, this refractory metal emits a light of extra-
ordinary splendour.1

The machine of M. de Meritens, which he has
generously brought over from Paris for our instruction,
is the newest of all. In its construction he falls back

1 The iridium light was shown by Mr. Ladd. It brilliantly illu-
minated the theatre of the Royal Institution.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

443

upon the principle of tlie magneto-electric machine,
employing permanent magnets as the exciters of the
induced currents. Using the magnets of the Alliance
Company, by a skilful disposition of his bobbins, M. de
Meritens produces with eight magnets a light equal to
that produced by forty magnets in the Alliance machines.
While the space occupied is only one-fifth, the cost is
little more than one-fourth of the latter. In the de
Meritens machine the commutator is abolished. The
internal heat is hardly sensible, and the absorption of
power, in relation to the effects produced, is small.
With his larger machines M. de Meritens maintains a
considerable number of lights in the -same circuit.1

In relation to this subject, inventors fall into two
classes, the contrivers of regulators and the constructors
of machines. M. Eapieff has hitherto belonged to in-
ventors of the first class, but I have reason to know that
he is engaged on a machine which, when complete, will
place him in the other class also. Instead of two single
carbon rods, M. Eapieff employs two pairs of rods, each
pair forming a V. The light is produced at the
common junction of the four carbons. The device for
regulating the light is of the simplest character. At
the bottom of the stand which supports the carbons are
two small electro-magnets. One of them, when the
current passes, draws the carbons together, and in so
doing throws itself out of circuit, leaving the control of
the light to the other. The carbons are caused to
approach each other by a descending weight, which acts
in conjunction with the electro-magnet. Through the
liberality of the proprietors of the Times , every facility

1 The small machine transforms one-and-a-quarter horse-power
into heat and light, yielding about 1,900 candles ; the large machine
transforms five-horse power, yielding about 9,000 candles.

444

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

has been given to M. Rapieff to develope and simplify
his invention at Printing House Square. The illumina-
tion of the press-room, which I had the pleasure of
witnessing, under the guidance of M. Rapieff himself, is
extremely effectual and agreeable to the eye. There
are, I believe, five lamps in the same circuit, and the
regulators are so devised that the extinction of any
lamp does not compromise the action of the others.
M. Rapieff has lately improved his regulator.

Many other inventors might here be named, and
fresh ones are daily crowding in. Mr. Werdermann
has been long known in connection with this subject.
Employing as negative carbon a disc, and as positive
carbon a rod, he has, I am assured, obtained very satis-
factory results. The small resistances brought into
play by his minute arcs enable Mr. Werdermann to
introduce a number of lamps into a circuit traversed by
a current of only moderate electro-motive power. M.
Reynier is also the inventor of a very beautiful little
lamp, in which the point of a thin carbon rod, properly
adjusted, is caused to touch the circumference of a car-
bon wheel which rotates underneath the point. The
light is developed at the place of contact of rod and
wheel. One of the last steps, though I am informed not
quite the last, in the improvement of regulators is this :
The positive carbon wastes more profusely than the
negative, and this is alleged to be due to the greater
heat of the former. It occurred to Mr. William Sie-
mens to chill the negative artificially, with the view of
diminishing or wholly preventing its waste. This he
accomplishes by making the negative pole a hollow cone
of copper, and by ingeniously discharging a small jet
of cold water against the interior of the cone. His
negative copper is thus caused to remain fixed in
space, for it is not dissipated, the positive carbon only

THE ELECTKIC LIGHT.

445

needing control. I have seen this lamp in action, and

can bear ■witness to its success.

I might go on to other inventions, achieved or pro-
jected. "indeed, there is something bewildering in the
recent rush of constructive talent into this domain ot
applied electricity. The question and its prospects are
modified from day to day, a steady advance being made
towards the improvement both of machines and regu-
lators. With regard to our public lighting, I strongly
lean to the opinion that the electric light will at no
distant day triumph over gas. I am not so sure that it
will do so in our private houses. As, however, I am
anxious to avoid dropping a word here that could in-
fluence the share market in the slightest degree, I limit
myself to this general statement of opinion.

To one inventor in particular belongs the honour of
the idea, and the realisation of the idea, of causing the
carbon rods to burn away like a candle. It is needless
to say that I here refer to the young Russian
officer, M. Jablochkoff. He sets two carbon rods up-
right at a small distance apart, and fills the space
between them with an insulating substance like plaster
of Paris. The carbon rods are fixed in metallic holders.
A momentary contact is established between the two
carbons by a little cross-piece of the same substance
placed horizontally from top to top. This cross-piece
is immediately dissipated or removed by the current,
the passage of which once established is afterwards main-
tained. The carbons gradually waste, while the sub-
stance between them melts like the wax of a candle.
The comparison, however, only holds good for the act
of melting ; for, as regards the current, the insulating
plaster is practically inert. Indeed, as proved by M.
Rapieff and Mr. Wilde, the plaster may be dispensed
with altogether, the current passing from point to point

446

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

between the naked carbons. M. de Meritens has re-
cently brought out a new candle, in which the plaster
is abandoned, while between the two principal carbons
is placed a third insulated rod of the same material.
With the small de Meritens machine two of these
candles can be lighted before you; they produce a
very brilliant light.1 In the Jablochkofif candle it is
necessary that the carbons should be consumed at the
same rate. Hence the necessity for alternating currents
by which this equal consumption is secured. It will be
seen that M. Jablochkoff has abolished regulators alto-
gether, introducing the candle principle in their stead. In
my judgment, the performance of the Jablochkoff candle
on the Thames Embankment and the Holborn Viaduct
is highly creditable, notwithstanding a considerable
waste of light towards the sky. The Jablochkoff lamps,
it may be added, would be more effective in a street,
where their light would be scattered abroad by the ad-
jacent houses, than in the positions which they now
occupy in London.

It was my custom some years ago, whenever I
needed a new and complicated instrument, to sit down
beside its proposed constructor, and to talk the matter
over with him. The study of the inventor’s mind which
this habit opened out was always of the highest interest
to me. I particularly well remember the impression
made upon me on such occasions by the late Mr. Darker,
a philosophical instrument maker in Lambeth. This
man’s life was a struggle, and the reason of it was not
far to seek. No matter how commercially lucrative

1 The machine of M. de Meritens and the Farmer-Wallace
machine were worked by an excellent gas-engine, lent for the
occasion by the Messrs. Crossley, of Manchester. The Siemens
machine was worked by steam.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

447

the work upon which he was engaged might be, he
would instantly turn aside from it to seize and realise
the ideas of a scientific man. He had an inventor’s
power, and an inventor’s delight in its exercise. Ihe
late Mr. Becker possessed the same power in a very con-
siderable degree. On the Continent, Froment, Breguet,
Sauerwald, and others might be mentioned as eminent
instances of ability of this kind. Such minds resemble
a liquid on the point of crystallisation. Stirred by a
hint, crystals of constructive thought immediately shoot
through them. That Mr. Edison possesses this intui-
tive power in no common measure, is proved by what
he has already accomplished. He has the penetration
to seize the relationship of facts and principles, and
the art to reduce them to novel and concrete combina-
tions. Hence, though he has thus far accomplished
nothing that we can recognise as new in relation to the
electric light, an adverse opinion as to his ability to
solve the complicated problem on which he is engaged
would be unwarranted.

I will endeavour to illustrate in a simple manner Mr.
Edison’s alleged mode of electric illumination, taking ad-
vantage of what Ohm has taught ms regarding the laws
of the current, and what Joule has taught us regarding
the relation of resistance to the development of light
and heat. From one end of a voltaic battery runs a
wire, dividing at a certain point into two branches,
which reunite in a single wire connected with the other
end of the battery. From the positive end of the
battery the current passes first through the single wire
to the point of junction, where it divides itself between
the branches according to a well-known law. If the
branches be equally resistant, the current divides itself
equally between them. If one branch be less resistant
than the other, more than half the current will choose

448

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the freer path. The strict law is that the quantity of
current is inversely proportional to the resistance. A
clear image of the process is derived from the deport-
ment of water. When a river meets an island it divides,
passing right and left of the obstacle, and afterwards
reuniting. If the two branch beds be equal in depth,
width, and inclination, the water will divide itself
equally between them. If they be unequal, the larger
quantity of water will flow through the more open
course. And, as in the case of the water we may have
an indefinite number of islands, producing an indefinite
subdivision of the trunk stream, so in the case of elec-
tricity we may have, instead of two branches, any
number of branches, the current dividing itself among
them, in accordance with the law which fixes the re-
lation of flow to resistance.

Let us apply this knowledge. Suppose an insulated
copper rod, which we may call an ‘ electric main,’ to be
laid down along one of our streets, say along the Strand.
Let this rod be connected with one end of a powerful
voltaic battery, a good metallic connection being esta-
blished between the other end of the battery and the
water-pipes under the street. As long as the electric
main continues unconnected with the water-pipes, the
circuit is incomplete and no current will flow ; but if
any part of the main, however distant from the battery,
be connected with the adjacent water-pipes, the circuit
will be completed and the current will flow. Supposing
our battery to be at Charing Cross, and our rod of
copper to be tapped opposite Somerset House, a wire
can be carried from the rod into the building, and the
current passing through the wire may be subdivided into
any number of subordinate branches, which reunite
afterwards and return through the water-pipes to the
battery. The branch currents may be employed to

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

449

raise to vivid incandescence a refractory metal like
iridium or one of its alloys. Instead of being tapped
at one point, our main may be tapped at one bundled
points. The current will divide in strict accordance
with law, its power to produce light being solely limited
by its strength. The process of division closely re-
sembles the circulation of the blood ; the electric main
carrying the outgoing current representing a great
artery, the water-pipes carrying the return current re-
presenting a great vein, while the intermediate branches
represent the various vessels by which the blood is dis-
tributed through the system. This, if I understand
aright, is Mr. Edison’s proposed mode of illumination.
The electric force is at hand. Metals sufficiently re-
fractory to bear being raised to vivid incandescence are
also at hand. The principles which regulate the
division of the current and the development of its light
and heat are perfectly well known. There is no room
for a 4 discovery,’ in the scientific sense of the term,
but there is ample room for the exercise of that me-
chanical ingenuity which has given us the sewing
machine and so many other useful inventions. Know-
ing something of the intricacy of the practical problem,
I should certainly prefer seeing it in Mr. Edison’s hands
to having it in mine.1

It is sometimes stated as a recommendation to the
electric light, that it is light without heat ; but to dis-
prove this, it is only necessary to point to the experi-
ments of Davy, which show that the heat of the voltaic
arc transcends that of any other terrestrial source. The
emission from the carbon points is capable of accurate
analysis. To simplify the subject, we will take the

1 More than thirty years ago the radiation from incandescent
platinum was admirably investigated by Ur. Draper of New York.

VOL. II. G G

450

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

case of a platinum wire at first slightly warmed by the
current, and then gradually raised to a white heat.
When first warmed, the wire sends forth rays which have
no power on the optic nerve. They are what we call in-
visible rays ; and not until the temperature of the wire
has reached nearly 1,000° Fahr., does it begin to glow
with a faint, red light. The rays which it emits prior to
redness are all invisible rays, which can warm the hand
but cannot excite vision. When the temperature of
the wire is raised to whiteness, these dark rays not only
persist, but they are enormously augmented in inten-
sity. They constitute about 95 per cent, of the total
radiation from the white-hot platinum wire. They
make up nearly 90 per cent, of the emission from a
brilliant electric light. You can by no means have
the light of the carbons without this invisible emission
as an accompaniment. The visible radiation is, as it
were, built upon the invisible as its necessary foun-
dation.

It is easy to illustrate the growth in intensity of
these invisible rays as the visible ones enter the radia-
tion and augment in power. The transparency of the
elementary gases and metalloids — of oxygen, hydrogen,
nitrogen, chlorine, iodine, bromine, sulphur, phosphorus,
and even of carbon, for the invisible heat rays is extra-
ordinary. Dissolved in a proper vehicle, iodine cuts
the visible radiation sharply off, but allows the invisible
free transmission. By dissolving iodine in sulphur,
Professor Dewar has recently added to the number of
our effectual ray-filters. The mixture may be made as
black as pitch for the visible, while remaining trans-
parent for the invisible rays. By such filters it is
possible to detach the invisible rays from the total
radiation, and to watch their augmentation as the light
increases. Expressing the radiation from a platinum

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

451

wire when it first feels warm to the touch when,
therefore, all its rays are invisible — by the number 1,
the invisible radiation from the same wire raised to a
white heat may be 500 or more.1 It is not, then, by
the diminution or transformation of the non-luminous
emission that we obtain the luminous ; the heat rays
maintain their ground as the necessary antecedents and
companions of the light rays. When detached and
concentrated, these powerful heat rays can produce all
the effects ascribed to the mirrors of Archimedes at the
siege of Syracuse. While incompetent to produce the
faintest glimmer of light, or to affect the most delicate
air-thermometer, they will inflame paper, burn up wood,
and even ignite combustible metals. hen they im-
pinge upon a metal refractory enough to bear their
shock without fusion, they can raise it to a heat so
white and luminous as to yield, when analysed, all the
colours of the spectrum. In this way the dark rays
emitted by the incandescent carbons are converted into
light rays of all colours. Still, so powerless are these
invisible rays to excite vision, that the eye has been
placed at a focus competent to raise platinum foil to
bright redness, without experiencing any visual im-
pression. Light for light, no doubt, the amount of
heat imparted by the incandescent carbons to the air
is far less than that imparted by gas flames. It is less,
because of the smaller size of the carbons, and of the
comparative smallness of the quantity of fuel consumed
in a given time. It is also less because the air cannot
penetrate the carbons as it penetrates a flame. The
temperature of the flame is lowered by the admixture
of a gas which constitutes four-fifths of our atmosphere,
and which, while it appropriates and diffuses the heat,
does not aid in the combustion ; and this lowering of
1 See article ‘Radiation,’ vol. i.
a g 2

452

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

the temperature by the inert atmospheric nitrogen,
renders necessary the combustion of a greater amount
of gas to produce the necessary light. In fact, though
the statement may appear paradoxical, it is entirely
because of its enormous actual temperature that the
electric light seems so cool. It is this temperature
that renders the proportion of luminous to non-luminous
heat greater in the electric light than in our brightest
flames. The electric light, moreover, requires no air
to sustain it. It glows in the most perfect air vacuum.
Its light and heat are therefore not purchased at the
expense of the vitalising constituent of the atmo-
sphere.

Two orders of minds have been implicated in the
development of this subject ; first, the investigator and
discoverer, whose object is purely scientific, and who
cares little for practical ends ; secondly, the practical
mechanician, whose object is mainly industrial. It
would be easy, and probably in many cases true, to say
that the one wants to gain knowledge, while the other
wishes to make money ; but I am persuaded that the
mechanician not unfrequently merges the hope of profit
in the love of his work. Members of each of these
classes are sometimes scornful towards those of the
other. There is, for example, something superb in the
disdain with which Cuvier hands over the discoveries
of pure science to those who apply them : i Your grand
practical achievements are only the easy application of
truths not sought with a practical intent — truths which
their discoverers pursued for their own sake, impelled
solely by an ardour for knowledge. Those who tinned
them into practice could not have discovered them,
while those who discovered them had neither the time
nor the inclination to pursue them to a practical
result. Your rising workshops, your peopled colonies,

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

453

your vessels which furrow the seas ; this abundance,
this luxury, this tumult,’— ‘ this commotion,’ he would
have added, were he now alive, 4 regarding the electric
light ’ — ‘ all come from discoverers in Science, though
all remain strange to them. The day that a discovery
enters the market they abandon it ; it concerns them
no more.’

In writing thus, Cuvier probably did not sufficiently
take into account the reaction of the applications of
science upon science itself. The improvement of an
old instrument or the invention of a new one is often
tantamount to an enlargement and refinement of the
senses of the scientific investigator. Beyond this, the
amelioration of the community is also an object worthy
of the best efforts of the human brain. Still, assuredly
it is well and wise for a nation to bear in mind that
those practical applications which strike the public eye,
and excite public admiration, are the outgrowth of
long antecedent labours begun, continued, and ended,
under the operation of a purely intellectual stimulus.
c Few,’ says Pasteur, 4 seem to comprehend the real
origin of the marvels of industry and the wealth of
nations. I need no other proof of this than the fre-
quent employment in lectures, speeches, and official
language of the erroneous expression, “ applied science.”
A statesman of the greatest talent stated some time ago
that in our day the reign of theoretic science had rightly
yielded place to that of applied science. Nothing, I
venture to say, could be more dangerous, even to prac-
tical life, than the consequences which might flow from
these words. They show the imperious necessity of a
reform in our higher education. There exists no cate-
gory of sciences to which the name of “ applied science ”
could be given. We have science and the applications
of science which are united as tree and fruit.’

454

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

A final reflection is here suggested. We have
amongst us a small cohort of social regenerators — men
of high thoughts and aspirations — who would place the
operations of the scientific mind under the control of a
hierarchy which should dictate to the man of science
the course that he ought to pursue. How this hierarchy
is to get its wisdom they do not explain. They decry
and denounce scientific theories ; they scorn all re-
ference to asther, and atoms, and molecules, as subjects
lying far apart from the world’s needs ; and yet such
ultra-sensible conceptions are often the spur to the
greatest discoveries. The source, in fact, from which
the true natural philosopher derives inspiration and
unifying power is essentially ideal. Faraday lived in
this ideal world. Nearly half a century ago, when he
first obtained a spark from the magnet, an Oxford don
expressed regret that such a discovery should have been
made, as it placed a new and facile implement in the
hands of the incendiary. To regret, a Comtist hier-
archy would have probably added repression, sending
Faraday back to his bookbinder’s bench as a more
dignified and practical sphere of action than peddling
with a magnet. And yet it is Faraday’s spark which
now shines upon our coasts, and promises to illuminate
our streets, halls, quays, squares, warehouses, and, per-
haps at no distant day, our homes.

THE END.

LONDON : PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-8TREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

By the same Author.

LESSONS IN ELECTRICITY

AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, 1875-6.

Crown 8vo. with 58 Woodcuts and Diagrams, price 2s. 6d.

More than fifty years ago the Board of Management of the Royal
Institution resolved to extend its usefulness, as a centra of scientific in-
struction, by giving, during the Christmas and Easter holidays of each
year, two courses of Lectures suited to the intelligence of boys and girls.
On December 12, 1825, a Committee appointed by the Managers reported
‘that they had consulted Mr. Faraday on the subject of engaging him to
take a part in the juvenile lectures proposed to be given during the Christ-
mas and Easter recesses, and they found his occupations were such that it
would be exceedingly inconvenient for him to engage in such lectures.’

Faraday’s holding aloof was, however, but temporary, for at Christmas
1827 we find him giving a ‘ Course of Six Elementary Lectures on Chemistry,
adapted to a J uvenile Auditory.’ The Easter lectures were soon abandoned,
but from the date mentioned to the present time the Christmas lectures'
have been a marked feature of the Royal Institution.

In Christmas 1875 it fell to the Author’s lot to give one of these
courses. He had heard doubts expressed as to the value of Science-
teaching in schools, and heard objections urged on the score of the expen-
siveness of apparatus. Both doubts and objections would, he considered,
be most practically met by shewing what could be done, in the way of
discipline and instruction, by experimental lessons involving the use of
apparatus so simple and inexpensive as to be within everybody’s reach.
With some amplification, the substance of these Christmas lessons is given
: in the present volume. 6

OPINIONS of the PRESS.

‘ These form, with some amplification,
the substance of a Christmas course of
;il lectures given by Prof. Tyndall to a
I juvenile audience. They are what such
1 ' teaching requires to be— simple in lan-
guage, well-arranged, and progressive,

; each and every step being either demon-
■> strated or illustrated by experiments that
are within the reach of anyone’s performing
(i for himself.’ Lancet.

It is often objected that physical science
» cannot be taught in schools in consequence

I' of the expense of apparatus. Whilst ad-
mitting that there is something in this
objection, it certainly loses half its force
on the perusal of these lectures. Indeed
almost everything used in the experiments’

‘Ore described may be had for a five-pound
note ; and surely no school could object to so
mall an outlay for a course of lectures on
lectricity.’ Popular Science Review

This is a very attractive little book,
especially distinguished by the selection of
experiments— many of them very novel
and interesting — which can be performed
with cheap and home-made apparatus. A
popular history of discoveries in frictional
electricity runs through it, serving as a
text on which the experiments are the
commentary.’ Athenaeum.

‘ We strongly and cordially recommend
this capital little treatise to all boys who
possess a scientific turn of mind, and they
cannot do better than make for themselves
the simple apparatus necessary for the
performance of the principal experiments
in the book ; and to work through the
book during tho long winter days of the
Christmas holidays.’ .

Quarterly Journal of Science

London, LONGMANS & CO.

Works by the same Author.

SOUND.

Third Edition, revised and augmented, including Recent
Researches on Fog-Signalling ; with Portrait and 190
Woodcuts and Diagrams. Crown 8vo. 10s. Gd.

HEAT a MODE of MOTION.

New Edition, being the Sixth ; with a Plate, Woodcuts
& Diagrams. [In preparation.

LECTURES on LIGHT DELIVERED in the
UNITED STATES of AMERICA in 1872 and 1873.
Latest Edition, with Portrait, Lithographic Plate and 59
Diagrams. Crown 8vo. price 7s. Gd.

NOTES of a COURSE of NINE LECTURES

on LIGHT, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great
Britain, a.d. 1869. Crown 8vo. price Is. sewed, or Is. Gd.
cloth.

NOTES of a COURSE of SEVEN LECTURES
on ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA and THEORIES,
delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain,
a.d. 1870. Crown 8vo. price Is. sewed ; Is. Gd. cloth.

RESEARCHES on DIAMAGNETISM and
MAGNE-CRYSTALLIC ACTION ; including the Ques-
tion of Diamagnetic Polarity. New Edition, with
numerous Illustrations. [In preparation.

CONTRIBUTIONS to MOLECULAR
PHYSICS in the DOMAIN of RADIENT HEAT. With
Two Plates and Thirty-one Woodcuts. 8vo. price 16s.

EAR AD AY as a DISCOVERER.

Cheaper Edition, with Two Portraits. Fcp. 8vo.
price 3s. Gd.

London, LONGMANS & CO.

mm

j#tepaffehfa

'■.'';.''!Sv*- 'if nr.

,h\i>;i«',SI.‘>Ali;:‘.-

'S4fc*.'rCV**i